- As in object-oriented programming, object-oriented databases (OOD) also work together in a database system that can work with most of the complex data objects ; objects that mirror are primarily used in object-oriented programming languages.
- Everything is an object, and many things are pretty complex, having different properties and methods in object-oriented programming. Also, an object-oriented database management system works together with an object-oriented programming language to facilitate the storage and retrieval of object-oriented data.
- When our program is running, you might have an object—for an instance of a task. That object has properties like flavor and cuisine. It will be having some inbuilt methods like update_task(). Somewhere early in our program, so when you have initialized that task object, we can now have access because it is stored in memory in the database.
- If our program terminates the execution of the program, what can happen? The answer is simple: your object will be gone as the data object was transient, not persistent. It will vanish. So the next time your program starts working, you’ll need to retrieve those data values (like flavor and cuisine) from your database all over again, so to initialize a new task, we need to take a new object, for instance, again.
- In an OOD, data objects are stored with all of the properties they have inherited in the database present. When your program terminates, the things continue to persist, held in the OOD. When our program starts up again, it will retrieve an object with the properties from the database. This storing and retrieving of a complex data object with an OOD is transparent to the database user.
- This is quite different from relational databases, such as MySQL or SQLite, which are relational databases that may not be significantly different from document databases like MongoDB. Usually, in relational databases, the developer needs to compose an object from a set of queries.
- In contrast, in the document databases and the mapping of the document fields to the class properties, we should be almost transparent to rectify the information present in databases.
OODs have been around for decades, and MongoDB Realm is one of this generation’s new and advanced software.
Example of an Object-Oriented Database
One of the famous databases is MongoDB which offers an OOD called Realm Mobile Database, where the query language can construct native objects through the SDK you use while working on an application. For example, in the javascript Software Development Kit, an object fetches look something like this:
const myTask = realm.objectForPrimaryKey("Task", 12345);
Components of Object-Oriented Data Models
The elements of an OODM are:
- Data Models
- The elements of an OODM are:
- Object: An actual world entity, such as a specific life task in a to-do list-“take the garbage out.”
- Attributes and Methods: An object has various states and behaviors. An object has properties called attributes like name, status, create_date,create_data these sets of properties when taken together, represent the state. Along with this, an object has behaviors known as methods, actions, or functions that can be modified or operated on its properties, like update_new().
Class: It’s like grouping all objects with the same properties and behaviors from a class. As explained above, we have talked about task objects obtained above. Things together belong to the Task class in the program.
- Object-Oriented Design Patterns: In Object-oriented data modeling, it implies there are certain principles like inheritance, polymorphism, and association, etc. An object-oriented database system will also support these same concepts.
The main characteristic of objects is their possibility of user-constructed types in the database. An object created in an application saves the data into a database.
Databases usually directly deal with data as complete objects, as the information that comes instantly is stored in available object packages.
In relational databases, The basic building blocks are PostgreSQL or MySQL, which usually create tables and store data with actions based on logical connections between the table data.
Such characteristics make object databases suitable for projects with complex data that require an object-oriented approach to programming. An object-oriented management system provides support functionality catered to by object-oriented programming where complex objects are centralized. This approach usually unifies attributes and behaviors of data into one entity.
Advantages of Object-Oriented Databases
- As with all of their complex associations to other objects, and because complex data objects can be persisted in an OOD, a significant advantage of choosing the OOD over RDBMS is the ability to query across these complex relationships very quickly, making it more efficient.
- There are no slow “joins” or fast joins in RDBMS. Instead, we have more efficient queries with complex data.
- Since the database structure is so more relatable to the programming objects, the code is more straightforward and lighter.
- For example, we can think back that our task object instance, which cannot be stored in MySQL, needs to be decomposed first into its attributes to be held in the table as a row with columns below. There is also a reverse process that will involve retrieval and composition, not so with other object-oriented or document databases.
Disadvantages of Object-Oriented Databases
- If you’re using an object-oriented programming language, an OOD may be a great choice as it needs to manage complex data with complex object-to-object to create associations. So the Designing and optimizing a database system for these kinds of complexities, however, also has its trade-offs.
- For one thing, the relative performance of elementary database operations , the ones that might lookup for an attribute from a relational database table, can be optimal.
- Additionally, while users of RDBMS use a standard query language (SQL), users of object-oriented database systems may not have widely adopted standards at their disposal, so for the most part, each flavor of FOOD is tightly coupled to an object-oriented programming language.
The community is still very small in the ecosystem of web development within the RDBMS space.
Also Read: Understanding Databases in MeteorJS
