The Object Database Standard: Odmg 2.0; Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems;

This completely revised standard for object database management systems is an essential guide to future trends in object-oriented and database technology. It represents an important industry consensus on component technology for database products and languages that enables wide acceptance and adoption of object database technology. ODMG 2.0 provides for object databases what SQL provided for relational databases by ensuring the portability of applications across platforms and products. The goal of the standard is to combine programming languages and database systems into a single environment, providing better performance and more powerful representation for complex database applications. ODMG 2.0 draws upon related work represented by ANSI SQL-92 and the OMG Object Model and Interface Definition Language. Major enhancements to version 2.0: ODMG has defined a new binding for Sun's Java programming language that combines the safety and pure object-orientation of Smalltalk with the more powerful data and syntax of C++, as well as security and automatic program transfer on the Internet. The ODMG object model has been totally rewritten and expanded to provide a comprehensive specification of object database semantics across many programming languages. ODMG has defined a standard external form for data and the data schema, allowing data interchange between databases. Updates and improvements have been made to the chapters on C++, Smalltalk, and Object Query Language.