Efficient assembly of complex objects

Abstract

Although object-oriented database systems offer advantages over relational or record-oriented database systems, such as modeling facilities for complex objects, they are criticized for poor performance and query capabilities on set-oriented applications The unacceptable performance is due in part to the object-at-a-time processing typically used by object-oriented database systems. We believe that improved performance of objectoriented database systems depends partially on the efficient and selective retrieval of sets of complex objects from secondary storage. In this report, we present the method of complex object retrieval and assembly used in the Volcano query processing system and the Revelation project. We also present experimental results comparing set-oriented versus object-at-a-time complex object assembly.