Simplifying Complex Objects: The PROBE Approach to Modelling and Querying Them

Several recent papers have described application requirements, data model capabilities, or implementation approaches for supporting objects with a complex internal structure. These “complex objects” are interesting because they are often found in interesting new applications of databases, such as engineering. Unfortunately, the requirements for complex objects have typically been described without relating them to specific new capabilities required from the DBMS, and frequently the extensions have been tied to the relational model. This paper attempts to clarify the requirements for such capabilities in a model-independent way. It shows that a relatively small number of capabilities are really needed, and outlines how we are trying to incorporate many of them into PROBE, an object-oriented DBMS being developed at CCA.