Next-Generation Object Database Standardization
ODBMS.ORG, a vendor-independent non-profit group of high-profile software experts lead by Prof. Roberto Zicari, today announced the publication of a new whitepaper on the current status of efforts to create a next-generation object database standard within the Object Database Technology Working Group (ODBTWG) of the Object Management Group (OMG), authored by ODBMS.ORG expert and ODBTWG chair Mike Card from Syracuse Research Corporation.
This paper, which is available for immediate and free download, presents a discussion of technology issues considered in the Object Database Technology Working Group. While the contents of this paper are not to be considered an adopted standard of any kind, they are presented to create discussion in the computer industry on this topic. Specifically, the OMG plans to invite to a Object Database Technologies Users and Vendors Roundtable that it is intending to hold as a special event during the OMG TC meeting in Burlingame, CA in December 2007.
Following the dissolution of the Object Data Management Group (ODMG) in 2001, standardization efforts for object databases languished. What has emerged since is a fractured marketplace where each vendor has developed a unique set of programming interfaces and features and no truly portable way of interacting with an object database exists. In 2005, the OMG’s Object Database Technology Working Group was formed as the successor to the ODMG, and its first effort has been to create the object equivalent of the relational calculus. The group believes that the foundation for this “object calculus” can be found in the research done by ODBMS.ORG expert Prof. Kazimierz Subieta and his students at the Polish-Japanese Institute of Information Technology.
The white paper is supposed to serve as an introduction to Prof. Subieta’s “stack-based architecture” (SBA) and to define the OMG version of it. The definitions and semantics of SBA will, in the belief of the authors, allow the construction of a complete and correct object model that supports a powerful object query language as well as a complete and correct set of equivalent native programming language bindings.
More information about the work of the ODBTWG at objectdb@omg.org.
About ODBMS.ORG
ODBMS.ORG (www.odbms.org) is a vendor-independent, not-for-profit educational program on object database technology and the integration between object-oriented programming and databases. Designed by Prof. Roberto Zicari of Frankfurt University, the program’s goal is to promote and further the use of object databases – by offering free resources for students, faculty and researchers at universities and research centers, as well as for JAVA and .NET developers in the commercial and the open source world. Content is provided by a panel of internationally recognized experts, who share research articles and teaching materials with the community via the organization’s Web portal.
Contact ODBMS.ORG at editor@odbms.org.