A Multimedia display extension to SQL Language and Design Architecture.pdf

A Multimedia display extension to SQL: Language Design andArchitectureChitta Baral, Graciela Gonzalez and Tran SonDepartment of Computer ScienceUniversity of Texas at El PasoEl Paso, Texas 79968U.S.A.fchitta,chelis,tsong@March 8, 1997AbstractWe propose here a loosely-bound SQL extension that will allow users to include high-leveldisplay specications with an SQL query, particularly when dealing with multimedia databases.This way, the user can specify both the data that needs to be extracted and how it should bedisplayed. We also describe an architecture that will allow a relatively simple implementationof dynamic query browsers using the proposed query language on stand-alone applications orWeb pages. We have implemented a major subset of our proposed extension and are workingon a complete prototype.1 IntroductionAt the time when the concept of a \database came into being, nobody imagined the extent andvariety of data that will eventually be stored in such structures. To display data as columns androws of text is no longer sucient these days. Multimedia databases, with their rich content ofimages, audio, video and animations, demand much more.Multimedia information is not necessarily stored using a dierent data model. Relational databasesare often used to store pointers (lenames) of the multimedia data. However, if the user tries touse a traditional query interface or a query language such as SQL, answers to queries made tomultimedia databases are displayed in the same \spreadsheet style as normal data queries, or, atbest, as a list of navigatable links to the real elements that make up the answer. For anythingbeyond that, the user has to rely on a programmer to write a graphical interface in C, PowerBuilder, Visual Basic, C++ or any other programming language.The design of special graphical interfaces becomes more dicult if we wish to access databases anddynamically display data over the Web. This has been a subject of research for some time now[NS96, Ra94]. Ac