A Distributed Object-Oriented Database System Supporting Shared and Private Databases

Abstract

ORION-2 is a commercially available, federated, object-oriented database management system designed and implemented at MCC. One major architectural innovation in ORION-2 is the coexistence of a shared databese and a number of private databases. The shared database is accessible to all authorized users of the system, while each private database is accessible to only the user who owns it. A distributed database system with a shared database and private databases for individual users is a natural architecture for data-intensive application environments on a network of workstations, notably computer-aided design and engineering systems. This paper discusses the benefits and limitations of such a system and explores the impact of such an architecture on the semantics and implementation of some of the key functions of a database system, notably queries, database schema, and versions. Although the issues are discussed in the context of an object-oriented data model, the results 1991 are applicable to database systems supporting other data models. © 1991, ACM. All rights reserved.