Comparing between Database Systems - Essay Example

Name: Prof: Subj: Date: May 4, 2018 Handling Multimedia Data: A comparison between leading RDBMS MS SQL, ORACLE, and IBM DB2 Comparing or finding the advantage and disadvantage among the leading RDBMS particularly in handling multimedia data is not an easy task. The comparison should be objective and free from discrimination to prevent errors and misconception. To attain neutrality, the report must present the matter clearly and discussed all significant views to gain full understanding of the issue. To easily manage the task, the comparison will be limited to multimedia handling and its primary components. Since the report involve technical and procedural knowledge of data handling and manipulation, it is best to start presenting the issue by dealing with the nature of databases, the Relational Database Management System, SQL, and Multimedia files. Comparable to a data file, a database does not directly present data or information to user but rather uses a certain application that would retrieve the information and submit it in a format understandable to user. Although similar to data files, a database system is more powerful and organized. Unlike data files that requires specific data format to access, a database is data format independent. The information in the database are grouped together as records with definable relationships or links and contains a catalog that other applications be able to use to determine how the information is organized. It contains data and other objects such as indexes, views, stored procedures, and triggers defined to support external applications data manipulation activities. A typical database is divided into two parts: the physical database itself and the software application DBMS or Database Management System. This application is the one responsible for accessing the information and implementing the database structure such as the relationships between data, checking and ensuring the data are written and read properly, making sure the rules are not violated in defining the data relationship, and recovering data in case of unforeseen system failures. The most common way, widely use, most effective, and popular among database developers in organizing data in a database is through data relationship. Relational database systems effectively organized data by using tables and define them following the process called normalization. Normalization is the process to remove inconsistency while building the structure of a table and ensures that the set of tables and its relationships to other tables will be organized effectively. A Relational Database Management System or simply RDBMS is based on the relational model introduced by Edgar F. Codd. It is a distinctive class of database system where data are presented to the user as relations, typically in tabular form with rows and columns and providing relational operators for data manipulation. In other words, it is an application to present or view data as a collection of rows and columns. Almost all RDBMS utilize SQL (Structured Query Language) as their tool for accessing information in a database. It is an ANSI/ISO standard that is used to create, modify, retrieve and manipulate data from RDBMS. It is created for a specific purpose of querying data contained in a relational database to solve much wider set of problems (Wikipedia, RDBMS). Multimedia files use multiple forms of information processing to inform or to enhance user’s experience. These are text, audio, graphics, animation, video, and interactive presentations (Lecture, ISAD330, slide 5). In the Web, the online multimedia is fast becoming object-oriented and data-driven enabling more user interaction like photo galleries in which images and text are combined and editable by user without reprogramming. Relational Database companies are now engage in the development and incorporation of multimedia data in the traditional database, far away from the customary attribute-based data handling which are very restrictive. RDBMS companies are pushing forward for content-based databases storing multimedia files for various applications integrating conventional and multimedia data to cover crime prevention, CCTV, Medical Imaging, Meteorology, Banking, Geographical Information Systems, Picture Libraries, Advertising and Promotion, Digital Libraries, Art galleries, Web Search, Online Shopping, and Web 2.0 applications (From lecture MMRDBMS, slide 6). Multimedia Media Database Management System or MMRDBMS has come along way in multimedia processing. Major RDBMS commercial companies such as ORACLE, Microsoft, and IBM are now competing with the newfound technology and each of them has something good to say about their product. Although products produced by these companies do have some other useful and notable features, the comparison between them will be strictly multimedia data handling. The method of comparison will be base on the most significant functions or features that are common and essential to multimedia handling. The fist step is to determine the essential requirements in multimedia handling and use them as reference for comparison. Let us find out the common components of these RDBMS in handling multimedia data starting with ORACLE. ORACLE, a company founded in 1977 introduced Oracle V2 as a commercial relational database system that supports basic SQL functionality. The company grew and release various version of its DBMS and in 1985 began supporting the client-server model. In the early 90’s Oracle version 7h or commonly known as DatawareHouse began supporting referential integrity, stored procedures, and triggers and continue developing other features. In 1997, Oracle, which is now a big corporation, released Version 8 with support for object oriented programming and multimedia applications. The next version, (8i), extends its functionality to the Internet by incorporating Java virtual machine. Adapting to the needs of the Internet, ORACLE releases more version of the product with more than 400 features including XML support (Wikipedia, Oracle) Oracle’s multimedia support for the 8i version is the ORACLE interMedia, which make it possible for Oracle8i to store, retrieve, and manage multimedia files such as text, documents, geographic location information, images, audio, and video. It extends the capability of a typical RDBMS to handle multimedia content over the Internet and electronic commerce (Oracle Corporation, 2000). Oracle supports the following basic capabilities: 1. STORAGE a. interMedia provide storage for all image file format including audio and video. b. Binary Large Object (BLOB) c. File-based Large Object (BFILES) d. URL that holds multimedia files stored in HTTP Server e. Streaming audio and video data stored in Media servers 2. RETRIEVAL a. Accessible through applications written in relational and object interfaces such as customary 3GLs, Java, and C++. b. Support for common application requirements through object types. 3. MANIPULATION a. image properties b. format conversion and compression c. scaling, cropping, copying, and deleting images 4. MANAGEMENT of information (META DATA) for all media types with the following attributes a. source type, location, and source name b. update date stamp c. data description d. data format e. MIME type of the audio, image and video data f. Audio and Video Comments g. Audio encoding type, number of channels, sampling rate, sample size, compression type, and play time h. Image characteristics including height and width, image content length, image content format, and image compression format i. Video characteristics such as frame width and height, resolution, rate play, duration, number of frames, compression type, color mode, and bit rate MICROSOFT SQL SERVER, an RDBMS created by a well-known company Microsoft, is originally for businesses with small to medium sized databases. Like Oracle and other database application, MS SQL followed the ANSI/ISO standard SQL for data manipulation. The latest version of MS SQL SERVER 2005 released last year support large enterprise databases using T-SQL (Transact-SQL) as their official query application with features for stored procedures and transaction. It also supports Open Database Connectivity (ODBC), client connectivity via Web Services (SOAP) protocol, and cross platform support for Java applications (Microsoft Corp., 2005, Chigrik, 2003). Like the 2000 version of MS SQL Server, it supports the traffic of huge websites or large enterprise data processing using JDBC driver that enables basic and advanced data types within a Java application. The advanced data types introduced through JDBC 2.0 core API (Advanced Programmers Interface) are those who support multimedia function and can be understood by Java programming. Below is the list of SQL Server advanced data type and note the equivalent Java language types that are also supported by Oracle. It’s probably the same; varbinary (max) image is equivalent to Oracle’s Binary Large Object (BLOB). SQL Server Types JDBC Types (java.sql.Types) Java Language Types varbinary(max) image LONGVARBINARY byte[] (default), Blob, CharacterStream, BinaryStream, String Text ntext varchar(max) nvarchar(max) LONGVARCHAR String (default), Clob, CharacterStream, BinaryStream Xml LONGVARCHAR String (default), CharacterStream, Clob, byte[], BinaryStream, Blob Udt VARBINARY (max size of 8000 bytes) String (default), byte[], BinaryStream, Object Table taken from www.microsoft.com Microsoft SQL Server with JDBC driver supports the following basic capabilities: 1. STORAGE a. LONGVARBINARY- image b. LONGVARCHAR – character and binary stream c. LONGVARCHAR- XML for multimedia files stored in HTTP Server d. VARBINARY- UDT for binary stream 2. RETRIEVAL a. Accessible through applications written in Java. b. Columns of type text, ntext, xml, and image can be retrieved and updated through JDBC 3.0 methods. c. Support for other database application and platform limited to T-SQL and Window-based programs. 3. MANIPULATION a. Update and write b. No format conversion and compression c. No scaling, cropping, copying, and deleting images 4. MANAGEMENT of information (META DATA) for all basic data types only a. none IBM DB2 is a product of long evolution since Edgar F. Codd of IBM in the early 70’s wrote his paper on “Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks”. And four years later working in the same company, Don Chamberlin and Ray Boyce wrote the “SEQUEL”, a Structured English Query Language that became the foundation for Standard Query Language (Jones, 2003). IBM inspired with Codd’s relational model released a complete line of RDBMS that is now commonly known as DB2 Universal Database (DB2 UDB). IBM also built an engine around its popular DB2 with supports for “data warehousing, data analysis, data mining, media asset management, enterprise content management, and information integration” (Jones, 2003, p.1) With the challenge to extend traditional data management to content-based digitized information, IBM drove a kind of business renovation to deal with these challenges. With support for different platforms such as Linux and applications from Microsoft and Java, IBM DB2 increases its focus on usability, scalability, ease of development, and administration. The enterprise content and records management is DB2’s answer to multimedia processing. It involves data management of all kinds of information whether structured or not to solve most business difficulties and other customer requirements. DB2 is managing content which are more focus on information such as images and other multimedia format, word processing documents and computer-generated reports. The Media asset management with DB2 includes storing and managing large collections of large multimedia objects or files commonly applicable to companies with large multimedia libraries and broadcasting. The enterprise content management deals with large collections of smaller objects like scanned bank check images, statements of accounts, and other important documents (Jones 2003, p.1.). DB2 enables user-defined types (UDF) and methods in UNIX as well as Windows operating systems, large objects for multimedia files, triggers and constraints for "active" databases, and complicated optimization for complex or persistent queries (Almaden, n.d., p.1). The DB2 Information Integrator’s job is to provide programming layer on top of Content Management and other data sources for the purpose of accessing, searching and retrieving data from sources using universal interface. This approach is helpful in retrieving information regardless of data or document type (Jones 2003, p.1). IBM DB2 UDB supports the following basic capabilities: 1. STORAGE a. LOB-Large Object Data files including binary (BLOB) b. CLOB and DBCLOB – character and double byte character c. XML data type – for documents and multimedia files stored in HTTP Server d. UDT - User Defined Types with or more named attributes 2. RETRIEVAL a. Accessible through applications written for Windows and Java. b. XQUERY, XMLQUERY, JDBC and standard SQL c. Support for PHP, Fortran, Perl, Cobol, C, C++. 3. MANIPULATION a. Read, write, copy, back-up b. Image, audio, and video manipulation equivalent to Oracle. MANAGEMENT of multimedia information. DB2 employs third party image processing library such as ImageMagick™ to deliver enhanced functionality in administering and processing still images straight inside a DB2 UDB database system (Stolze 2005, p.1). It means that multimedia file management is not entirely within DB2 but with “extenders” or third party software. “Extenders” are part of the User Defined Functions (UDF) offered by DB2. It maintains image, audio, and video attribute much like Oracle’s multimedia management list. The table below shows the comparison between Oracle, Microsoft, and IBM with regards to the multimedia handling standard features and functionality. Standard Features ORACLE MICROSOFT IBM Comments Documents and Files Oracle10g - DB2 XML Oracle10g SQL Server DB2 Image Oracle10g SQL Server DB2 Audio Oracle10g - DB2 Video Oracle10g - DB2 Studying the data collected from the makers of these RDBMS and consulting some article made by authorities in the field, we may now conclude this report by giving our objective analysis of the products. To simplify the comparison, the decision will be made base on multimedia handling only as mentioned in the beginning of this paper. Microsoft products may have a good reputation in the market but not all of them really deserve our praise. Microsoft SQL Server doesn’t really have much to offer when it comes to multimedia handling. It may be good in some other field such as handling large enterprise traditional databases, but it is not really that complete when handling multimedia files. Although it supports storage and retrieval of large object data files, it doesn’t have much facility for multimedia data manipulation. It doesn’t support audio, video, and document file storage that other RDBMS is capable of. (Please see table). Excluding MS SQL from the contest, our search will now take use to the two remaining popular RDBMS. IBM DB2 Universal Database is perhaps a good contender for Oracle’s almost complete line of multimedia handling capabilities. It stores, retrieve, manipulate, and manage multimedia data directly in the database identical to Oracle. IBM DB2 UDB using its “extenders” which is available thru UDF offers equal opportunity with Oracle’s interMedia. Multimedia management in DB2 is made possible with the integration of ImageMagick. IBM DB2 UDB also offers audio and video handling thru its DB2 Audio and Video (A/V) Extenders. DB2 A/V Extender suite enables user to store, import, export, and query audio and video clips together with other business data in a single SQL query. It is really difficult to decide which one is better than the other when multimedia handling is the only concern however we can safely say that both systems are stable and efficient while performing their typical functions. The performance of both RDBMS multimedia handling also depends on the experience of the developers and administrators who by themselves tested the software capability in different environment and requirements in a considerable long period of time. However, after a careful analysis using the technical facts and figures collected along with the information provided by their own manufacturers, we can now fairly conclude that Oracle and IBM’s RDBMS multimedia handling capabilities is equal in the sense that they both managed to offer functionalities essential to efficient multimedia handling. References: Almaden, n.d., “DB2 Universal Database”, Almaden Computer Science Research, [online], 11/27/06, http://www.almaden.ibm.com/cs/db2.html Chigrik, A., 2003, “A Comparison of SQL Server with DB2 v8.1”, Database Journal, [online], 11/25/06, http://www.databasejournal.com/ features/mssql/article.php /10894_2177441_3 Jones, J., 2003, “The Big Picture”, IBM DB2 Information Management Software and DB2 Universal Database, Senior Program Manager, IBM, [online], http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/db2/library/techarticle/0301jones/0301jones.html Microsoft Corporation, 2005, “Microsoft SQL Server 2005”, Online Documentation, [online], 11/25/06, www.microsoft.com Oracle Corporation, 2000, “Oracle interMedia Audio, Image, and Video User's Guide and Reference”, Release 8.1.7, Part Number A85336-01, [online], 1125/06, www.oracle.com Stolze Knut, 2005,”A DB2 UDB Image Extender, Information Integration Development, IBM, Germany, [online], 11/28/06, http://www-128.ibm.com /developerworks/ db2/library/techarticle/dm-0504stolze/ Wikipedia, n.d., “The Online Encyclopedia”,[online], 11/20/06,www.wikipedia.com Read More