A Multimedia database (MMDB) is a collection of related for

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms, such as Text (literary theory), writing, Sound, audio, images, animations, or video, into a single presentation. T ...

data Data ( , ) are a collection of discrete or continuous values that convey information, describing the quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted for ...

. The

data include one or more primary media

data types In computer science and computer programming, a data type (or simply type) is a collection or grouping of data values, usually specified by a set of possible values, a set of allowed operations on these values, and/or a representation of these ...

such as

text Text may refer to: Written word * Text (literary theory) In literary theory, a text is any object that can be "read", whether this object is a work of literature, a street sign, an arrangement of buildings on a city block, or styles of clothi ...

image An image or picture is a visual representation. An image can be Two-dimensional space, two-dimensional, such as a drawing, painting, or photograph, or Three-dimensional space, three-dimensional, such as a carving or sculpture. Images may be di ...

graphic Graphics () are visual images or designs on some surface, such as a wall, canvas, screen, paper, or stone, to inform, illustrate, or entertain. In contemporary usage, it includes a pictorial representation of the data, as in design and manufa ...

objects (including

drawing Drawing is a Visual arts, visual art that uses an instrument to mark paper or another two-dimensional surface, or a digital representation of such. Traditionally, the instruments used to make a drawing include pencils, crayons, and ink pens, some ...

s, sketches and

illustration An illustration is a decoration, interpretation, or visual explanation of a text, concept, or process, designed for integration in print and digitally published media, such as posters, flyers, magazines, books, teaching materials, animations, vi ...

animation Animation is a filmmaking technique whereby still images are manipulated to create moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Animati ...

sequences,

audio Audio most commonly refers to sound, as it is transmitted in signal form. It may also refer to: Sound *Audio signal, an electrical representation of sound *Audio frequency, a frequency in the audio spectrum *Digital audio, representation of sound ...

and

video Video is an Electronics, electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving picture, moving image, visual Media (communication), media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, whi ...

. A Multimedia Database Management System (MMDBMS) is a framework that manages different types of data potentially represented in a wide diversity of formats on a wide array of media sources. It provides support for multimedia

, and facilitate for creation, storage, access, query and control of a multimedia database.

Contents of MMDB

A Multimedia Database (MMDB) hosts one or more

(i.e. text, images, graphic objects, audio, video, animation sequences). These

are broadly categorized into ''three classes'': * Static media (time-independent:

and

object). * Dynamic media (time-dependent:

and

). * Dimensional media(3D game and computer aided drafting programs).

Comparison of multimedia data types

Additionally, a Multimedia Database (MMDB) needs to manage additional information pertaining to the actual multimedia data. The information is about the following: * Media data: the actual data representing an object. * Media format data: information about the format of the media data after it goes through the acquisition, processing, and encoding phases. * Media keyword data: the keyword descriptions, usually relating to the generation of the media data. * Media feature data: content dependent data such as contain information about the distribution of colours, the kinds of textures and the different shapes present in an image. The last three types are called

metadata Metadata (or metainformation) is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive ...

as they describe several different aspects of the media data. The media keyword data and media feature data are used as indices for searching purpose. The media format data is used to present the retrieved information.

Requirements of Multimedia databases

Like the traditional

databases In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and ana ...

, Multimedia databases should address the following requirements: * Integration **Data items do not need to be duplicated for different programs invocations *Data independence **Separate the database and the management from the application programs *Concurrency control **Allows concurrent transactions *Persistence **Data objects can be saved and re-used by different transactions and program invocations *Privacy **Access and authorization control *Integrity control **Ensures

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and a ...

consistency between transactions *Recovery **Failures of transactions should not affect the persistent data storage *Query support **Allows easy querying of multimedia data Multimedia databases should have the ability to uniformly query data (media data, textual data) represented in different formats and have the ability to simultaneously query different media sources and conduct classical

operations across them. ''( Query support)'' They should have the ability to retrieve media objects from a local storage device in a good manner. ''(Storage support)'' They should have the ability to take the response generated by a query and develop a presentation of that response in terms of

audio-visual Audiovisual (AV) is electronic media possessing both a sound and a visual component, such as slide-tape presentations, films, television programs, corporate conferencing, church services, and live theater productions. Audiovisual service pro ...

media and have the ability to deliver this presentation. ''(Presentation and delivery support)''

Issues and challenges

* Multimedia data consists of a variety of media formats or file representations including

TIFF Tag Image File Format or Tagged Image File Format, commonly known by the abbreviations TIFF or TIF, is an image file format for storing raster graphics images, popular among graphic artists, the publishing industry, and photographers. TIFF is w ...

, BMP, PPT, IVUE, FPX,

JPEG JPEG ( , short for Joint Photographic Experts Group and sometimes retroactively referred to as JPEG 1) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degr ...

MPEG The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is an alliance of working groups established jointly by International Organization for Standardization, ISO and International Electrotechnical Commission, IEC that sets standards for media coding, includ ...

, AVI, MID, WAV,

DOC DOC, Doc, doc or DoC may refer to: People and characters * Doc, an abbreviation of doctor * Doc (nickname) * Doc (mascot), the Towson University mascot Persons * The D.O.C., American rapper (born 1968) * Doc Gallows (born 1983), ring nam ...

GIF The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; or , ) is a Raster graphics, bitmap Image file formats, image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released ...

EPS An extended play (EP) is a Sound recording and reproduction, musical recording that contains more tracks than a Single (music), single but fewer than an album. Contemporary EPs generally contain up to eight tracks and have a playing time of 1 ...

, PNG, etc. Because of restrictions on the conversion from one format to the other, the use of the data in a specific format has been limited as well. Usually, the data size of multimedia is large such as video; therefore, multimedia data often require a large storage. *Multimedia database consume a lot of processing time, as well as bandwidth. *Some multimedia

such as video, audio, and animation sequences have temporal requirements that have implications on their storage, manipulation and presentation, but

and

graphics Graphics () are visual images or designs on some surface, such as a wall, canvas, screen, paper, or stone, to inform, illustrate, or entertain. In contemporary usage, it includes a pictorial representation of the data, as in design and manufa ...

data have special constraints in terms of their content.

Application areas

Examples of multimedia database application areas: *

Digital Libraries A digital library (also called an online library, an internet library, a digital repository, a library without walls, or a digital collection) is an online database of digital resources that can include text, still images, audio, video, digital ...

* News-on-Demand *

Video-on-Demand Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos, television shows and films digitally on request. These multimedia are accessed without a traditional video playback device and a typical static broadcasting ...

* Music database * Geographic Information Systems (GIS) * Telemedicine

References