The advanced information management prototype

Abstract

The Advanced Information Management Prototype is a system that has been designed and implemented as research vehicle for the area of non-standard database applications. It is an object oriented system heavily influenced by the ideas of nested relations (e.g. NF2, VERSO). The paper addresses the following areas: • Overall design objectives and their motivation by the history and background of the R&D project • Discussion of the query language interface (supported data types and data structures, semantics of major language constructs, possibilities for the treatment of shared and recursive data) • Detailed discussion of the internal data structures and selected system components (record management, complex object management, version management, workstation/server cooperation) • User defined data types and operations (abstract data type support) • Current implementation status and outlook on future directions of research and development.