This document provides an overview of object-relational database systems and features for supporting complex data types and object-oriented features in SQL, including: 1) Structured types allow composite attributes to be represented directly in the database with a richer type system. 2) Type inheritance in SQL allows defining subtypes that inherit attributes and methods from supertypes. 3) Collection types like arrays and multisets allow storing sets and lists of values as attributes of structured types. 4) Table inheritance maps entity-relationship subtyping to subtables in the database. 5) Methods provide procedural functionality on structured types and their instances.

1. Fall 2013
insert into
'Advanced_Database_Course’
('Title','Author') values(
‘Object-Based Databases‘,
‘Farzad Nozarian‘
);

2. •Summary
Overview1
Complex Data Types2
Structured Types and
Inheritance in SQL
3
Structured Types3.1
Type Inheritance3.2

3. •Summary
Table Inheritance4
Array and Multiset Types in SQL5
Querying Collection-Valued
Attributes
5.2
Nesting and Unnesting5.3
Creating and Accessing
Collection Values
5.1

4. Overview

5. • richer type system including complex data types and
object orientation
•Overview
Obstacles using the relational data model
Object-relational database systems
• limited type system support
• difficulty in accessing database data from in C++ or Java
Object-relational data model
• migrate for users who wish to use object-oriented features

6. •Overview
Persistence
Storage
management
Concurrency
Recovery
Querying
DBMS
Object-Oriented Database
complex objects
object identity
encapsulation
types & classes
class hierarchy
extensibility
Computational
completeness
overriding &
overloading
Object-Oriented System
+

7. •Overview
• Motivation for the development of complex data types
• Object-relational database systems
• Supporting persistence for data
• object-oriented database system
• object-relational mapping
• Object-relational approach Vs. object-oriented approach

8. Overview
Complex Data Types

9. •Complex Data Types
Example1 : addresses
Example 2: phone numbers
(street, address, city, state, postal code)
Atomic data item of type string
A better alternative structured data types
The alternative of normalization by creating a
new relation is expensive and artificial for this example.
Using normalization ?!

10. •Complex Data Types
A library application
satisfies 4NF
Several domains will be non-atomic

11. •Complex Data Types
The 4NF design requires queries to join multiple relations,
whereas the non-1NF design makes many types of queries
easier.
The typical user or programmer of an information-retrieval
system thinks of the database in terms of books having sets
of authors, as the non-1NF design models.

12. Overview
Complex Data Types
Structured Types and Inheritance in SQL

13. •Structured Types and Inheritance in SQL
Structured Types
Allow composite attributes of E-R designs to be
represented directly
create type Name as
(firstname varchar(20),
lastname varchar(20)) final;
create type Address as(street varchar(20),
city varchar(20),
zipcode varchar(9))
not final;

14. •Structured Types and Inheritance in SQL
Structured Types
We can now use these types to create
composite attributes in a relation
create table person(
name Name,
address Address,
dateOfBirth date);
The components of a composite attribute can
be accessed using a “dot” notation

15. •Structured Types and Inheritance in SQL
Structured Types
We can also create a table whose rows are of a
user-defined type
create type PersonType as (
name Name,
address Address,
dateOfBirth date)
not final
create table person
of PersonType;

16. •Structured Types and Inheritance in SQL
Structured Types
An alternative way of defining composite
attributes in SQL is to use types.
create table person_r(
name row (firstname varchar(20),lastname varchar(20)),
address row (street varchar(20),city varchar(20),zipcode
varchar(9)),
dateOfBirth date);
select name.lastname,address.city
from person;
name and address have
rows of the table also have an !
finds the last name and city of each person

17. •Structured Types and Inheritance in SQL
Structured Types
create type PersonType as (
name Name,
address Address,
dateOfBirth date)
not final
method ageOnDate(onDate date)
returns interval year;
A structured
type can have
methods
defined on it !

18. •Structured Types and Inheritance in SQL
Structured Types
Can I create the method body separately ?
create instance method ageOnDate(onDate date)
returns interval year
for PersonType
begin
return onDate−self.dateOfBirth;
end
• which type this method is for
can contain
procedural statements!
• refers to the Person instance on which the method is invoked
• this method executes on an instance of the Person type
Yes !

19. How to find the age
of each person ?
•Structured Types and Inheritance in SQL
Structured Types
select name.lastname,
ageOnDate(current_date)
from person;

20. create function Name( firstname varchar(20), lastname varchar(20) )
returns Name
begin
set self.firstname = firstname;
set self.lastname = lastname;
end
•Structured Types and Inheritance in SQL
Structured Types
constructor functions are used to create values of structured types
How we can create a value of Name type ?
new Name(’John’, ’Smith’)

21. •Structured Types and Inheritance in SQL
Structured Types
Example : Create a new tuple in the Person
relation
insert into Person
values
( new Name(’John’, ’Smith’),
new Address(’20 Main St’, ’New York’, ’11001’),
date ’1960-8-22’);
Note !
By default every structured type has a constructor with no arguments,
which sets the attributes to their default values

22. •Structured Types and Inheritance in SQL
Type Inheritance
create type Person
(name varchar(20),
address varchar(20));
create type Student
under Person
(degree varchar(20),
department varchar(20));
create type Teacher
under Person
(salary integer,
department varchar(20));

23. •Structured Types and Inheritance in SQL
Type Inheritance
Can you create a TeachingAssistant type ?
Methods of a structured type are inherited by its
subtypes using overriding method
The keyword final says that subtypes may not be
created from the given type
not final says that subtypes may be created.
create type TeachingAssistant
under Student, Teacher;
Yes !

24. •Structured Types and Inheritance in SQL
Type Inheritance
any problem ?!
name
address in
department in
Person
Teacher
Student
create type TeachingAssistant
under Student with(department as student_dept),
Teacher with(department as teacher_dept);
Note!
The SQL standard
does not support
multiple inheritance

25. Overview
Complex Data Types
Structured Types and Inheritance in SQL
Table Inheritance

26. •Table Inheritance
Subtables in SQL correspond to the E-R notion of
specialization/generalization.
create table people of Person;
create table students of Student
under people;
create table teachers of Teacher
under people;

27. •Table Inheritance
Question
delete from people where P ;only people

28. Array and Multiset Types in SQL
Overview
Complex Data Types
Structured Types and Inheritance in SQL
Table Inheritance

29. •Array and Multiset Types in SQL
SQL supports two collection types
arrays
multisets
SQL:1999
SQL:2003
create type Publisher as
(name varchar(20),
branch varchar(20));
create type Book as
(title varchar(20),
author_array varchar(20) array[10],
pub_date date,
publisher Publisher,
keyword_set varchar(20) multiset);
create table books of Book;

30. •Array and Multiset Types in SQL
Creating and Accessing Collection Values
An array of values can be created in SQL:1999 in this way:
array[’Silberschatz’, ’Korth’, ’Sudarshan’]
A multiset of keywords can be constructed as follows:
multiset[’computer’, ’database’, ’SQL’]
insert into books
values (’Compilers’, array[’Smith’, ’Jones’],
new Publisher(’McGraw-Hill’, ’New York’),
multiset [’parsing’, ’analysis’] );
But, How we
can access or
update
elements of an
array ?

31. •Array and Multiset Types in SQL
Querying Collection-Valued Attributes
find all books that have the
word “database” as one of
their keywords
select title from books
where ’database’ in (
unnest (keyword_set) );
select author_array[1],author_array[2],author_array[3]
from books
where title = ’Database System Concepts’;

32. •Array and Multiset Types in SQL
Querying Collection-Valued Attributes
select B.title, A.author
from books as B, unnest (B.authorarray) as
A(author);
select title, A.author, A.position
from books as B,
unnest(B.author_array) with ordinality as A(author,
position);

33. Thanks