A METHODOLOGY FOR MODELING MULTIMEDIA DATABASES

Abstract

The modeling of multimedia databases in the context of multimedia information systems is a complex task. The designer has to model the structure and the dynamic behavior of multimedia objects, together with possible user interactions with them. These can include content-based queries, and dynamic presentations, which might both require the construction of special index structures on the stored data. In this paper we present a methodology for the design of multimedia databases. The methodology extends some of the Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagrams with constructs to model the structure of multimedia objects, their dynamic behavior, presentation layout, and user interactions. These constructs allow a designer to model important aspects of database oriented multimedia applications. As a consequence, it is possible to construct refinement techniques to map our high level models onto logical data models of several target multimedia DBMSs. In particular, we describe how to map our conceptual models onto extended relational data models.