1070-986X/97/$10.00 © 1997 IEEE 21 U narguably, full use of data depends on the ability to access and manip- ulate it at different levels of repre- sentation. Traditionally, a database is viewed as a controlled collection of data related to a given entity, while a database management system (DBMS) is viewed as a collection of such interrelated data together with the sets of pro- grams and operations used to define, create, store, access, manage, query, and present the informa- tion in the database. Therefore, to efficiently man- age and manipulate multimedia data requires the development of multimedia database manage- ment systems. A multimedia DBMS must provide for the effi- cient storage and manipulation of data represent- ed as text, images, audio, graphics, video, and so on. For conventional text-based information sys- tems, data access and manipulation have advanced considerably. However, for multimedia systems incorporating diverse data types with diverse characteristics and properties, they pose novel problems and issues. The different data types involved in multimedia databases may require spe- cial methods for optimal storage, access, indexing, and retrieval. The multimedia DBMS should also accommodate the special requirements by provid- ing some high-level abstractions to manage these different data types, along with a suitable interface for their presentation. Issues A multimedia DBMS must address many requirements, including ❚ traditional DBMS capabilities, ❚ huge capacity storage management, ❚ information retrieval, ❚ media composition, integration, and presentation, ❚ query support, ❚ interface and interactivity, and ❚ performance. These issues are discussed in the article “Multi- media Database Management—Requirements and Issues.” Research and development efforts in the design of multimedia DBMSs have produced prototypes and initial commercial products. However, inten- sified research and investigation are being carried out in several areas to enable the full realization of multimedia DBMSs. Some of these areas are dis- cussed briefly below and in some of the articles in this issue. Data model Much of the earlier work on multimedia DBMSs focused on using an object-oriented data model to support different data types. However, several features—such as synchronization mech- anisms, relationships between the objects, decom- position, and recombination of objects—need further research. Some recent conceptual models support synchronization. In addition to a conceptual model for repre- senting the objects, we need to develop an appro- priate language to specify the relationships and constraints. Furthermore, we must examine ways to integrate the constraint specification with the object specification to minimize impedance mis- match. Finally, a data model must isolate the user from the details of the storage device manage- ment and storage structures. Guest Editors’ Introduction Multimedia Database System s— A New Frontier Kingsley C. Nwosu Lucent Technologies Bhavani Thuraisingham Mitre Corporation P. Bruce Berra Syracuse University . Authorized licensed use limited to: Norfolk State University. Downloaded on August 21,2023 at 15:00:34 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.