JPH01276332A - Device and control method for data base - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To realize the handling of the multi-medium data that could not be handled with a relational data base by preparing a link defining area to store the key value of the multi-medium data and at the same time securing the linkage between said defining area and the multi-medium data to take out the contents of said data. CONSTITUTION:The object data on a data pool area to be linked with the field value (key value) of the link attribute are stored in the data pool devices 6 and 7 and controlled by an object control part 3. The linkage between said field value and the object data is controlled by a link control part 4. In other words, another data pool defined separately contains the variable length character data, the graphic data, the sound data, the natural picture data, the animation data, etc. Such data pool areas are set at various memory media in addition to a floppy disk and a hard disk. Thus various object multiple media can be handled via various physical memory multiple media.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION Field of Industrial Application The present invention relates to a database device based on a relational model.

Conventional technology Relational databases (database management systems based on relational models) express data and data structures using normalized indivisible data sets and constraints (schemas) on the sets. Therefore, by publishing the schema, it is possible to easily communicate the data structure to others, making it extremely versatile. In addition, certain operations (relational operations) are prepared for data and data sets, making it an excellent data model that allows you to easily extract data and change the data structure. For this reason, relational databases are widely used in the field of office processing, where there is a lot of data that has a relatively simple structure and is easy to normalize.

3.\-7 Problems to be Solved by the Invention For the reasons mentioned in the prior art, relational databases are suitable for standard applications in the field of business processing. However, recently there has been an increase in the number of cases in which large amounts of data are used by multiple people for general purposes, even outside of the field of administrative processing. In this case, the nature of the data is not limited to numerical data or fixed length character data like office data, but it is necessary to handle many types of data such as variable length character data, graphic data, sound data, natural image data, video data, etc. will arise.

Furthermore, due to the nature of these data, various types of data storage media are required, such as not only floppy disks and hard disks, but also compact disks and optical disks.

In other words, there is an increasing demand for handling various object multimedia with various physical storage multimedia.

Conventional relational databases have a problem in that these so-called multimedia data cannot be practically handled due to the strong restriction of normalized data.

In view of this problem, the present invention attempts to handle the above object multimedia and physical storage multimedia while retaining the excellent versatility of relational databases.

Means for Solving the Problems The present invention solves the above-mentioned problems of conventional relational databases by linking each field value in a pre-specified definition area with data in a separately defined data pool area in a relational database. a link management section that performs relational operations on each field value in the specified domain, and an object that retrieves data from the data pool area linked to each field value in the specified domain. The relational database is expanded to include a management section.

Operation With the above-described configuration, the present invention stores variable length character data, graphic data, sound data, natural image data, video data, etc. in a separately defined data pool area, and further stores this data pool area on a 70 nopi disk or By setting the object multimedia to various storage media such as compact discs and optical discs in addition to hard disks, it is possible to handle various object multimedia with various physical storage multimedia. At this time, each multimedia data is linked to each field in a prespecified domain of the relational database, and the data in each field acts as a representative value of the linked multimedia data. This link domain extended by the present invention becomes the target of conventional relational calculations, and representative values of multimedia data can be handled in a general-purpose manner as before. Furthermore, linked object data can be extracted for the representative value extracted as a result of the relational operation.In other words, according to the present invention, a new link domain is provided to store the representative value of multimedia data6. -,.

In addition, by linking to multimedia data and extracting its contents, it is possible to handle multimedia data that could not be handled by conventional relational databases.

Embodiment Hereinafter, an embodiment of the database apparatus of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 shows a configuration diagram of a database device in an embodiment of the present invention.

In FIG. 1, 1 is an input/output and execution instruction section, 2 is a field calculation section, 3 is an object management section, 4 is a link management section, 5 is a database file device, 6 is a data pool device, and 7 is a data pool device. It is B.

The operation of the database device configured as described above will be described below with reference to FIGS. 1 and 2.

FIG. 2 shows an example 7, . . . -7 in which graphic data, which could not be handled in the past, is handled at the same time as character and numeric data that can be handled in a conventional relational database. In Figure 2, the attribute "color" is handled in the same way as in conventional relational databases, and "
The attribute "Name" is a link attribute expanded by the present invention. The field values of the expanded link attributes are also stored in the database file device 5 in the same way as in conventional relational databases, and the field calculation unit 2 performs conventional operations on each field value according to instructions from the input/output and execution instruction unit 1. The following calculations are performed.

On the other hand, object data in the data pool area linked to the field value (representative value) of this link attribute is stored in the data pool devices 6 and 7 and managed by the object management section 3. This link attribute's field value (
The link between the representative value) and the object data is managed by the link management section 4.

The data creation method will be described using the apple picture j in Figure 2 as an example. First, a picture of an apple is created on data pool device A. This creation tool may be prepared as a utility for the database device, or may be completely separate software.

However, the data structure can be controlled by the object management section 3. Regarding this point, it is possible to adopt a data structure close to the standard like PO3TSCRIPT (7), provide this data structure control section in the object management section 3, and allow various data structures.
One possible method is to transfer control from the object management section 3 to each control software only when controlling the data structure. In any case, the object created in the data pool device (in this case, a picture of a apple) can be retrieved from the W Science Department 3 using only the name "picture of an apple". Note that this example shows shapes, but
Various types of objects can be considered, including video and audio.

Next, the user uses the input/output and execution instruction unit 1 and the field calculation unit 2 to create a relational table having “name” and “color” as attributes, similar to a conventional relational database. However, "name" is defined here as a link attribute expanded in the present invention. Then, this field value 92, -7 "apple" is inputted, and an instruction to link with the object "apple picture" is given. In accordance with this instruction, the link management section 4 links the field value of the link attribute and the name of the object managed by the object management section 3.

Next, a method for making inquiries about the data created as described above will be described. In FIG. 2, direct relational operations can be performed on the link attribute "name" in exactly the same way as on other attributes. For example, it is possible to instruct the user to show the ``name'' whose ``color'' is ``red,'' or to retrieve a tuple whose ``name'' is ``apple.'' Up to this point, it is similar to the conventional relational database, but next, according to the present invention, multimedia data inquiries will be explained. When making an inquiry regarding the field value of a link attribute, the user instructs whether to retrieve the field value itself (that is, the representative value of the object) or the object itself. for example,"
When an instruction is given to retrieve an object whose name is "apple," the input 1Q7, -2 output and execution instruction section 1 prompts the field calculation section 2 to first retrieve the representative value of the object, "ringo." Next, the link management section 4 derives that the representative value "apple" is linked to the object name "picture of an apple" and instructs the object management section 3 to retrieve "picture of an apple". As described above, multimedia data can be handled without sacrificing the versatility of the relational database.

In Figure 2, the "apple picture" and "tangerine picture" are stored in the data pool device B, and the "banana picture" is stored in the data pool device B, but as in this example, the objects are It is also possible to be stored on multiple devices. This is because different objects may be stored on different physical media. This is because compact discs are appropriate for large amounts of code data, optical discs for moving images, and hard disks for codes that require high-speed access. In FIG. 1, a database file device 5 and a data pool device A.

11.

It does not matter if B is physically the same medium.

Effects of the Invention As described above, the present invention provides a link management unit that links each field value of a prespecified domain with data in a separately defined data pool area in a relational database, and a link management unit that links each field value of a prespecified domain with data in a separately defined data pool area, and By being equipped with a field operation unit that performs relational operations on values and an object management unit that retrieves data from the data pool area linked to each field value in the specified domain, it is possible to perform various object multimedia operations. can be handled with various physical storage multimedia. At this time, conventional relational calculations can also be performed on link attribute field values, making it possible to support the multimedia described above without sacrificing the versatility that is a major feature of relational databases. It is.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a configuration diagram of a database device according to an embodiment of the present invention, and FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of how graphic data is handled according to the present invention. 1... Input/output and execution instruction unit, 2... Field calculation unit, 3... Object management unit, 4...
. . . Link management unit, 5 . . . Database file device, 6 . . . Data pool device A, 7 . . . Data pool device B. Name of agent: Patent attorney Toshio Nakao and 1 other person L
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Claims (2)

[Claims] (1) A link management section that links each field value in a pre-specified domain with data in a separately defined data pool area, and a field calculation section that performs relational operations on each field value in the above-specified domain. ,
A database device comprising: an object management unit that retrieves data in a data pool area linked to each field value in the specified domain. (2) A means for linking each field value in a pre-specified domain with data in a separately defined data pool area, a means for performing a relational operation on each field value in the above-specified domain, and the above specification. and means for retrieving data in a data pool area linked to each field value in the defined domain.