Objects and Databases

by Alan Dearle, Roberto V. Zicari

AccordingtoFrancoisBancillonandWonKim[SIGMODRECORD,Vol.19,No. 4, December 1990], object-oriented databases started in around 1983. Twen- seven years later this publication contains the proceedings of the Third Inter- tional Conference on Object-Oriented Databases (ICOODB 2010). Two questions arise from this – why only the third, and what is of interest in the ?eld of object-oriented databases in 2010? The ?rst question is easy – in the 1980s and 1990s there were a number of conferences supporting the c- munity – the International Workshops on Persistent Object Systems started by Malcolm Atkinson and Ron Morrison, the EDBT series, and the International Workshop on Database Programming Languages. These database-oriented c- ferences complimented other OO conferences including OOPSLA and ECOOP, but towards the end of the last century they dwindled in popularity and ev- tually died out. In 2008 the First International Conference on Object Databases was held in Berlin. In 2009 the second ICOODB conference was held at the ETH in Zurich as a scienti?c peer-reviewed conference. What is particular about ICOODB is that the conference series was est- lished to address the needs of both industry and researcherswho had an interest in object databases, in innovative ways to bring objects and databases together and in alternatives/extensions to relational databases. The ?rst conference set the mould for those to follow – a combination of theory and practice with one day focusing on the theory of object databases and the second focusing on their practical use and implementation.

172 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 27, 2010

About the author

Alan Dearle is an experimental Computer Scientist whose primary interests are in the confluence of programming languages, databases, middleware and operating systems. He is a double graduate of St Andrews University and has held academic positions at the universities of St Andrews, Adelaide and Stirling. Throughout his career he has maintained close links with industry. As well as continuing to be an active researcher and committed teacher, he has served in various senior academic roles including Head of Computer Science at Stirling and St Andrews and is currently Dean of the Faculty of Science at The University of St Andrews.