|Oracle® Database Application Developer's Guide - Object-Relational Features
10g Release 1 (10.1)
Part Number B10799-01
This chapter describes the advantages and key features of the Oracle object-relational model. The chapter contains these topics:
Oracle object technology is a layer of abstraction built on Oracle relational technology. New object types can be created from any built-in database types and any previously created object types, object references, and collection types. Metadata for user-defined types is stored in a schema that is available to SQL, PL/SQL, Java, and other published interfaces.
Object types and related object-oriented features such as variable-length arrays and nested tables provide higher-level ways to organize and access data in the database. Underneath the object layer, data is still stored in columns and tables, but you are able to work with the data in terms of the real-world entities, such as customers and purchase orders, that make the data meaningful. Instead of thinking in terms of columns and tables when you query the database, you can simply select a customer.
Internally, statements about objects are still basically statements about relational tables and columns, and you can continue to work with relational data types and store data in relational tables as before. But now you have the option to take advantage of object-oriented features too. You can begin to use object-oriented features while continuing to work with most of your data relationally, or you can go over to an object-oriented approach entirely. For instance, you can define some object data types and store the objects in columns in relational tables, which enables you to extend the system built-in types with user-defined ones. You can also create object views of existing relational data to represent and access this data according to an object model. Or you can store object data in object tables, where each row is an object.
In general, the object-type model is similar to the class mechanism found in C++ and Java. Like classes, objects make it easier to model complex, real-world business entities and logic, and the reusability of objects makes it possible to develop database applications faster and more efficiently. By natively supporting object types in the database, Oracle enables application developers to directly access the data structures used by their applications. No mapping layer is required between client-side objects and the relational database columns and tables that contain the data. Object abstraction and the encapsulation of object behaviors also make applications easier to understand and maintain.
Below are listed several other specific advantages that objects offer over a purely relational approach.
Database tables contain only data. Objects can include the ability to perform operations that are likely to be needed on that data. Thus a purchase order object might include a method to sum the cost of all the items purchased. Or a customer object might have methods to return the customer's buying history and payment pattern. An application can simply call the methods to retrieve the information.
Using object types makes for greater efficiency:
Object types and their methods are stored with the data in the database, so they are available for any application to use. Developers can benefit from work that is already done and do not need to re-create similar structures in every application.
You can fetch and manipulate a set of related objects as a single unit. A single request to fetch an object from the server can retrieve other objects that are connected to it. For example, when you select a customer object and get the customer's name, phone, and the multiple parts of his address in a single round-trip between the client and the server. When you reference a column of a SQL object type, you retrieve the whole object.
In a relational system, it is awkward to represent complex part-whole relationships. A piston and an engine have the same status in a table for stock items. To represent pistons as parts of engines, you must create complicated schemas of multiple tables with primary key-foreign key relationships. Object types, on the other hand, give you a rich vocabulary for describing part-whole relationships. An object can have other objects as attributes, and the attribute objects can have their own object attributes too. An entire parts-list hierarchy can be built up in this way from interlocking object types.
Oracle implements the object-type system as an extension of the relational model. The object-type interface continues to support standard relational database functionality such as queries (
SELECT…FROM…WHERE), fast commits, backup and recovery, scalable connectivity, row-level locking, read consistency, partitioned tables, parallel queries, cluster database, export and import, and loader. Plus SQL and various programmatic interfaces to Oracle; including PL/SQL, Java, Oracle Call Interface, Pro*C/C++, and OO4O; have been enhanced with new extensions to support objects. The result is an object-relational model, which offers the intuitiveness and economy of an object interface while preserving the high concurrency and throughput of a relational database.
This section lists the key features and concepts of the object-relational model that are related to the database.
An object type is a kind of datatype. You can use it in the same ways that you use more familiar datatypes such as
VARCHAR2. For example, you can specify an object type as the datatype of a column in a relational table, and you can declare variables of an object type. You use a variable of an object type to contain a value of that object type. A value of an object type is an instance of that type. An object instance is also called an object. Example 1-1 shows how to create a user-defined object type named
Example 1-1 Creating the Person_typ Object
CREATE TYPE person_typ AS OBJECT ( idno NUMBER, name VARCHAR2(30), phone VARCHAR2(20), MAP MEMBER FUNCTION get_idno RETURN NUMBER ); / CREATE TYPE BODY person_typ AS MAP MEMBER FUNCTION get_idno RETURN NUMBER IS BEGIN RETURN idno; END; END; /
Object types also have some important differences from the more familiar datatypes that are native to a relational database:
A set of object types does not come ready-made with the database. Instead, you define the specific object types you want by extending built-in types with user-defined ones as shown in Example 1-1.
Object types are composed of parts, called attributes and methods.
Attributes hold the data about an object's features of interest. For example, a
student object type might have
date attributes. An attribute has a declared datatype which can in turn be another object type. Taken together, the attributes of an object instance contain that object's data.
Methods are procedures or functions provided to enable applications to perform useful operations on the attributes of the object type. Methods are an optional element of an object type. They define the behavior of objects of that type and determine what (if anything) that type of object can do.
Object types are less generic than native datatypes. In fact, this is one of their major virtues. You can define object types to model the actual structure of the real-world entities, such as customers and purchase orders, that application programs deal with. This can make it easier and more intuitive to manage the data for these entities. In this respect object types are like Java and C++ classes.
You can think of an object type as a blueprint or template which defines structure and behavior. An instantiation of the object type creates an object built according to the template. Object types are database schema objects, subject to the same kinds of administrative control as other schema objects.
See Also:Chapter 6, " Managing Oracle Objects "
You can use object types to model the actual structure of real-world objects. Object types enable you to capture the structural interrelationships of objects and their attributes instead of flattening this structure into a two-dimensional, purely relational schema of tables and columns. With object types you can store related pieces of data in a unit along with the behaviors defined for that data. Application code can then retrieve and manipulate these units as objects.
When you create a variable of an object type, you create an instance of the type and the result is an object. An object has the attributes and methods defined for its type. Because an object instance is a concrete thing, you can assign values to its attributes and call its methods.
You use the
TYPE statement to define object types. In Example 1-1, the
TYPE statement define the object type
The indented elements
phone in the
TYPE statements are attributes. Each has a datatype declared for it. These are simplified examples and do not show how to specify member methods.
Defining an object type does not allocate any storage. After they are defined, object types can be used in SQL statements in most of the same places you can use types like
CREATE TABLE contacts ( contact person_typ, contact_date DATE ); INSERT INTO contacts VALUES ( person_typ (65, 'Vrinda Mills', '1-800-555-4412'), '24 Jun 2003' );
contacts table is a relational table with an object type as the datatype of one of its columns. Objects that occupy columns of relational tables are called column objects.
See Also:"Row Objects and Column Objects"
Methods are functions or procedures that you can declare in an object type definition to implement behavior that you want objects of that type to perform. For example, a method is declared in Example 1-1 to allow comparisons between
The general kinds of methods that can be declared in a type definition are:
A principal use of methods is to provide access to the data of an object. You can define methods for operations that an application is likely to want to perform on the data so that the application does not have to code these operations itself. To perform the operation, an application calls the appropriate method on the appropriate object.
For example, the following SQL statement uses the
get_idno() method to display the Id number of persons in the
SELECT c.contact.get_idno() FROM contacts c;
You can also define static methods to compare object instances and to perform operations that do not use any particular object's data but instead are global to an object type.
A constructor method is implicitly defined for every object type, unless this default constructor is over-written with a user-defined constructor. A constructor method is called on a type to construct or create an object instance of the type.
See Also:"Object Methods"
Type inheritance adds to the usefulness of objects by enabling you to create type hierarchies by defining successive levels of increasingly specialized subtypes that derive from a common ancestor object type, which is called a supertype of the derived types. Derived subtypes inherit the features of the parent object type but extend the parent type definition. The specialized types can add new attributes or methods, or redefine methods inherited from the parent. The resulting type hierarchy provides a higher level of abstraction for managing the complexity of an application model.
For example, specialized types of persons, such as a student type or a part-time student type with additional attributes or methods, might be derived from a general person object type. See "Inheritance in SQL Object Types".
TYPE statement, you can modify, or evolve, an existing user-defined type to make the following changes:
Add and drop attributes
Add and drop methods
Modify a numeric attribute to increase its length, precision, or scale
Modify a varying length character attribute to increase its length
Change a type's
Dependencies of a type to be altered are checked using essentially the same validations applied for a
TYPE statement. If a type or any of its dependent types fails the type validations, the
TYPE statement rolls back.
Metadata for all tables and columns that use an altered type are updated for the new type definition so that data can be stored in them in the new format. Existing data can be converted to the new format either all at once or piecemeal, as it is updated. In either case, data is always presented in the new type definition even if it is still stored in the format of the older one.
CREATE TABLE person_obj_table OF person_typ;
You can view this table in two ways:
As a single-column table in which each row is a
person_typ object, allowing you to perform object-oriented operations
As a multi-column table in which each attribute of the object type
person_typ; such as
phone; occupies a column, allowing you to perform relational operations
For example, you can execute the following instructions:
INSERT INTO person_obj_table VALUES ( 1, 'John Smith', '1-800-555-1212'); SELECT VALUE(p) FROM person_obj_table p WHERE p.name = 'John Smith';
The first statement inserts a
person_typ object into
person_table as a multi-column table. The second selects from
person_obj_table as a
single-column table, using the
VALUE function to return rows as object instances. See "VALUE" for information on the
By default, every row object in an object table has an associated logical object identifier (OID) that uniquely identifies it in an object table. In a distributed and replicated environment, the system-generated unique identifier lets Oracle identify objects unambiguously.
See Also:"Storage Considerations for Object Identifiers (OIDs)" for information on Object Identifiers and using
Objects that are stored in complete rows in object tables are called row objects. Objects that are stored as columns of a table in a larger row, or are attributes of other objects, are called column objects.
An object view is a way to access relational data using object-relational features. It lets you develop object-oriented applications without changing the underlying relational schema.
Oracle allows the creation of an object abstraction over existing relational data through the object view mechanism. You access objects that belong to an object view in the same way that you access row objects in an object table. Oracle also supports materialized view objects of user-defined types from data stored in relational schemas and tables. By using object views, you can develop object-oriented applications without having to modify existing relational database schemas.
Object views also let you exploit the polymorphism that a type hierarchy makes possible. A polymorphic expression can take a value of the expression's declared type or any of that type's subtypes. If you construct a hierarchy of object views that mirrors some or all of the structure of a type hierarchy, you can query any view in the hierarchy to access data at just the level of specialization you are interested in. If you query an object view that has subviews, you can get back polymorphic data—rows for both the type of the view and for its subtypes.
REF is a logical pointer to a row object that is constructed from the object identifier (OID) of the referenced object and is an Oracle built-in datatype.
REFs and collections of
REFs model associations among objects, particularly many-to-one relationships, thus reducing the need for foreign keys.
REFs provide an easy mechanism for navigating between objects. You can use the dot notation to follow the pointers. Oracle does joins for you when needed, and in some cases can avoid doing joins.
You can use a
REF to examine or update the object it refers to. You can also use a
REF to obtain the object it refers to. You can change a
REF so that it points to a different object of the same object type hierarchy or assign it a null value.
The following example illustrates a simple use of a
Example 1-2 Using a REF to an Object
CREATE TYPE emp_person_typ AS OBJECT ( name VARCHAR2(30), manager REF emp_person_typ ); / CREATE TABLE emp_person_obj_table OF emp_person_typ; INSERT INTO emp_person_obj_table VALUES ( emp_person_typ ('John Smith', NULL)); INSERT INTO emp_person_obj_table SELECT emp_person_typ ('Bob Jones', REF(e)) FROM emp_person_obj_table e WHERE e.name = 'John Smith';
In declaring a column type, collection element, or object type attribute to be a
REF, you can constrain it to contain only references to a specified object table. Such a
REF is called a scoped
REF types require less storage space and allow more efficient access than unscoped
The following example shows
contact_ref scoped to
person_obj_table which is an object table of type
CREATE TABLE contacts_ref ( contact_ref REF person_typ SCOPE IS person_obj_table, contact_date DATE );
To insert a row in the table, you could issue the following:
INSERT INTO contacts_ref SELECT REF(p), '26 Jun 2003' FROM person_obj_table p WHERE p.idno = 1;
REF can be scoped to an object table of the declared type (
person_typ in the example) or of any subtype of the declared type. If scoped to an object table of a subtype, the
REF column is effectively constrained to hold references only to instances of the subtype (and its subtypes, if any) in the table.
See Also:"Inheritance in SQL Object Types"
It is possible for the object identified by a
REF to become unavailable through either deletion of the object or a revoking of privileges. Such a
REF is called dangling. Oracle SQL provides a predicate (called
DANGLING) to allow testing
REFs for this condition.
REFs can be avoided by defining referential integrity constraints. See "Rules for REF Columns and Attributes".
SELECT DEREF(c.contact_ref), c.contact_date FROM contacts_ref c;
SELECT e.name, e.manager.name FROM emp_person_obj_table WHERE e.name = 'Bob Jones';
In the example,
e.manager.name follows the pointer from the person's manager, and retrieves the manager's name. Following the
REF like this is allowed in SQL, but not in PL/SQL.
You can obtain a
REF to a row object by selecting the object from its object table and applying the
REF operator. For example, you can obtain a
REF to the person with identification number 1 as follows:
DECLARE person_ref REF person_typ; BEGIN SELECT REF(p) INTO person_ref FROM person_obj_table p WHERE p.idno = 1; END;/
The query must return exactly one row.
See Also:"Storage Size of REFs"
For modeling multi-valued attributes and many to many relationships, Oracle supports two collection datatypes: varrays and nested tables. Collection types can be used anywhere other datatypes can be used. You can have object attributes of a collection type in addition to columns of a collection type. For example, you might give a purchase order object type a nested table attribute to hold the collection of line items for a given purchase order.
You use the
TYPE statement to define collection types. In Example 1-3, the
TYPE statements define the object types
Example 1-3 Creating a Collection Datatype
CREATE TYPE people_typ AS TABLE OF person_typ; / CREATE TYPE dept_persons_typ AS OBJECT ( dept_no CHAR(5), dept_name CHAR(20), dept_mgr person_typ, dept_emps people_typ); /
In this simplified example,
people_typ is a collection type, specifically a nested table type. The
dept_persons_typ object type has an attribute
people_typ of this type. Each row in the people_typ nested table is an object of type
person_typ which was defined in Example 1-1.
See Also:"Creating Collection Datatypes"
This section lists the key features of the object-relational model that are related to languages and application programming interfaces (APIs).
To support the new object-related features, SQL extensions, including new DDL, have been added to create, alter, or drop object types; to store object types in tables; and to create, alter, or drop object views. There are DML and query extensions to support object types, references, and collections.
PL/SQL is an Oracle database programming language that is tightly integrated with SQL. With the addition of user-defined types and other SQL types, PL/SQL has been enhanced to operate on user-defined types seamlessly. Thus, application developers can use PL/SQL to implement logic and operations on user-defined types that execute in the database server.
Oracle Java VM is tightly integrated with the RDBMS and supports access to Oracle Objects through object extensions to Java Database Connectivity (JDBC), which provides dynamic SQL, and SQLJ, which provides static SQL. Thus, application developers can use the Java to implement logic and operations on user-defined types that execute in the database server. With Oracle, you can now also create SQL types mapped to existing Java classes to provide persistent storage for Java objects using SQLJ object types where all the methods are implemented in their corresponding Java classes. See "Java Object Storage".
Database functions, procedures, or member methods of an object type can be implemented in PL/SQL, Java, or C as external procedures. External procedures are best suited for tasks that are more quickly or easily done in a low-level language such as C, which is more efficient at machine-precision calculation. External procedures are always run in a safe mode outside the address space of the RDBMS server. Generic external procedures can be written that declare one or more parameters to be of a system-defined generic type. The generic type permits a procedure that uses it to work with data of any built-in or user-defined type.
Object Type Translator (OTT) and Oracle JPublisher provide client-side mappings to object type schemas by using schema information from the Oracle data dictionary to generate header files containing Java classes and C structures and indicators. These generated header files can be used in host-language applications for transparent access to database objects.
Oracle provides an object cache for efficient access to persistent objects stored in the database. Copies of objects can be brought into the object cache. Once the data has been cached in the client, the application can traverse through these at memory speed. Any changes made to objects in the cache can be committed to the database by using the object extensions to Oracle® Call Interface programmatic interfaces.
Oracle Call Interface (OCI) and Oracle C++ Call Interface provide a comprehensive application programming interface for application and tool developers seeking to use the object capabilities of Oracle. Oracle Call Interface provides a run-time environment with functions to connect to an Oracle server, and control transactions that access objects in the server. It allows application developers to access and manipulate objects and their attributes in the client-side object cache either navigationally, by traversing a graph of inter-connected objects, or associatively by specifying the nature of the data through declarative SQL DML. Oracle Call Interface also provides a number of functions for accessing metadata information at run-time about object types defined in the server. Such a set of functions facilitates dynamic access to the object metadata and the actual object data stored in the database.
The Oracle Pro*C™ precompiler provides an embedded SQL application programming interface and offers a higher level of abstraction than Oracle Call Interface. Like Oracle Call Interface, the Pro*C precompiler allows application developers to use the Oracle client-side object cache and the Object Type Translator Utility. Pro*C supports the use of C bind variables for Oracle object types. Furthermore, Pro*C provides new simplified syntax to allocate and free objects of SQL types and access them by either SQL DML, or through the navigational interface. Thus, it provides application developers many benefits, including compile-time type checking of (client-side) bind variables against the schema in the server, automatic mapping of object data in an Oracle server to program bind variables in the client, and simple ways to manage and manipulate database objects in the client process.
See Also:"Oracle Call Interface (OCI)"
See Also:"Oracle Objects For OLE (OO4O)"