Multimedia Database Management System (MMDBMS)

Its difficult to find appropriate information on Multimedia Database Management System or MMDBMS (also acronym-ed as MDBMS). Believe me I've been there. I got an assignment recently and spent almost two days searching for supporting documents on the Internet. So, I thought why not make it easier for people hence forth. 

Here's a list of some basic questions about MMDBMS and there answer as complied from sources on the Internet and a few reference books. 

A multimedia database is a database that hosts one or more primary media file types such as .txt (documents), .jpg (images), .mp4 (videos), .mp3 (audio), etc. 

These loosely fall under three main categories: 

 Static media (time-independent, i.e. images and handwriting) 

 Dynamic media (time-dependent, i.e. video and sound bytes)

 Dimensional media (i.e. 3D games or computer-aided drafting programs- CAD) 

All primary media files are stored in binary strings of zeros and ones, and are encoded according to file type. The term "data" is typically referenced from the computer point of view, whereas the term "multimedia" is referenced from the user point of view.

Q. 1) What are the Properties of Multimedia Database Management System?

Using the general functions provided by a traditional DBMS as a guide, we can describe the purposes of a multimedia DBMS as follow:

Data persistence: Data this time, computer technology continues to develop and, together with this development, operating systems and other programs change. For this reason, a DBMS should be able to process data, even when the environment has changed. The ability of data objects to persist (survive) through different transactions and program invocations.

Consistent view of the data: Ensures consistency of the database state from one transaction to another through constraints imposed on transaction. Particularly in concurrent multi-user operation, it is important to provide a consistent view of the data during concurrent database queries at specific point in time. This property is ensured by protocols for time synchronization.

Data Security: Restrict unauthorized access and modification of stored data. The security and integrity of data in case of an error is one of the most important conditions for a DBMS. This property is achieved by use of the transaction concept.

Database query and output: Databases store different information (entries), which can be retrieved at any given time by database queries. Database queries are formulated by use of query languages, such as SQL. In addition, each entry in a database includes some status information (e.g. that the entry was changed). This information has to be reproduced exactly to ensure that the correct information about entry is supplied. Ensure that that the query mechanisms are suited for multimedia data.

A few more properties of multimedia database system that are worth a mention are:

•Integration: Ensures that data items needs not be duplicated during different program invocation requiring the data.

•Data Independence: Separation of the database and the management functions from the application programs.

•Recovery: Methods needed to ensure that results of transaction that fail do not affect the persistent data storage.

•Version Control: Organization and management of different version of persistent objects, which might be required by applications.

Q. 2) What are the Characteristics of Multimedia Database Management System?

Q. 3) What are the Operations that can be performed on MMDBMS?

Q. 4) Explain the Integration of MMDBMS?

Design of multimedia database management system is based on two different kinds of DBMS:
1. Extensible Relational MMDBMS
2. Object Oriented Database Management System

1. Extensible Relational MMDBMS

Example of ERDBMS:

Classification of Relational Model:

2.  Object Oriented Model

Q. 5) Explain the Architecture of MMDBMS?

Architecture of a multi-user database can become complex. It is not clear which architecture would be the best option for a multimedia database. A transaction involving multimedia data will in general be expected to take longer. Locks will have to be maintained for longer periods. MDBMS has formal database architecture. It has a separate user view from the system view.

It basically constitutes a three layer architecture. A simple representation is shown below:

Interface

The interface between the user and the database is used for the following activities:

•  Object browsing
• Compose
•  Dispose

Object Composition

The object composition part of the multimedia database manages the multimedia objects.

Storage

Storage functions of multimedia database involve clustering and indexing of multimedia data.

Three-layer architecture

A distributed MMDBMS has a more complex structure due to the database not being stored locally, at one place.

Architecture of a typical distributed MMDBMS

Q. 6) Explain the Functionality of MMDBMS?

The Functionality of multimedia comprise of the following:

•The operating system provides the management interface for MDBMS to all local devices.

•The MDBMS provides an abstraction of the stored data and their equivalent devices, as is the case in DBMS without multimedia.

•The communication system provides for MDBMS abstractions for communication with entities at remote computers.

These communication abstractions are specified through interfaces according to, for example, the Open System Interconnection (OSI) architecture.

•A layer above the DBMS, operating system and communication system can unify all these different abstractions and offer them, for example, in an object oriented environment such, as a toolkit. Thus, an application should have access to each abstraction at different levels.

As you might have noticed, the above are assorted notes. If you want to dig deeper, refer the following books:

1. Multimedia: computing, communication and application by Ralf Steinmetz, Klara Nahrstedt, Prentice Hall
2. Multimedia Database Management System by B. Prabhakaran, Springer

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