Content independence in multimedia databases

A database management system is a general-purpose software system that facilitates the processes of defining, constructing, and manipulating databases for various applications. This article investigates the role of data management in multimedia digital libraries, and its implications for the design of database management systems. The notions of content abstraction and content independence are introduced, which clearly expose the unique challenges (for database architecture) of applications involving multimedia search. A blueprint of a new class of database technology is proposed, which supports the basic functionality for the management of both content and structure of multimedia objects.