The Object Data Management Group (ODMG) was conceived in the summer of 1991 at a breakfast with

object database An object database or object-oriented database is a database management system in which information is represented in the form of objects as used in object-oriented programming. Object databases are different from relational databases which ar ...

vendors that was organized by Rick Cattell of

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...

. In 1998, the ODMG changed its name from the Object Database Management Group to reflect the expansion of its efforts to include specifications for both object database and object-relational mapping products. The primary goal of the ODMG was to put forward a set of specifications that allowed a developer to write

portable Portable may refer to: General * Portable building, a manufactured structure that is built off site and moved in upon completion of site and utility work * Portable classroom, a temporary building installed on the grounds of a school to provide a ...

applications for object database and object-relational mapping products. In order to do that, the data schema, programming

language binding In programming and software design, binding is an application programming interface (API) that provides glue code specifically made to allow a programming language to use a foreign library or operating system service (one that is not native to th ...

s, and data manipulation and

query language Query languages, data query languages or database query languages (DQL) are computer languages used to make queries in databases and information systems. A well known example is the Structured Query Language (SQL). Types Broadly, query language ...

s needed to be portable. Between 1993 and 2001, the ODMG published five revisions to its specification. The last revision was ODMG version 3.0, after which the group disbanded.

Major components of the ODMG 3.0 specification

*''Object Model.'' This was based on the

Object Management Group The Object Management Group (OMG) is a computer industry standardization, standards consortium. OMG Task Forces develop enterprise integration standards for a range of technologies. Business activities The goal of the OMG was a common portabl ...

's Object Model. The OMG core model was designed to be a common denominator for object request brokers, object database systems, object programming languages, etc. The ODMG designed a profile by adding components to the OMG core object model. *''Object Specification Languages.'' The ODMG Object Definition Language (ODL) was used to define the object types that conform to the ODMG Object Model. The ODMG Object Interchange Format (OIF) was used to dump and load the current state to or from a file or set of files. *''Object Query Language (OQL).'' The ODMG

OQL Object Query Language (OQL) is a query language standard for object-oriented databases modeled after SQL and developed by the Object Data Management Group (ODMG). Because of its overall complexity the complete OQL standard has not yet been fully ...

was a declarative (nonprocedural) language for query and updating. It used SQL as a basis, where possible, though OQL supports more powerful object-oriented capabilities. *''C++ Language Binding.'' This defined a

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

binding of the ODMG ODL and a C++ Object Manipulation Language (OML). The C++ ODL was expressed as a library that provides classes and functions to implement the concepts defined in the ODMG Object Model. The C++ OML syntax and semantics are those of standard C++ in the context of the standard class library. The C++ binding also provided a mechanism to invoke OQL. *''Smalltalk Language Binding.'' This defined the mapping between the ODMG ODL and

Smalltalk Smalltalk is an object-oriented, dynamically typed reflective programming language. It was designed and created in part for educational use, specifically for constructionist learning, at the Learning Research Group (LRG) of Xerox PARC by Alan Ka ...

, which was based on the OMG Smalltalk binding for the OMG Interface Definition Language (IDL). The Smalltalk binding also provided a mechanism to invoke OQL. *''Java Language Binding.'' This defined the binding between the ODMG ODL and the

Java programming language Java is a high-level, class-based, object-oriented programming language that is designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible. It is a general-purpose programming language intended to let programmers ''write once, run anywh ...

as defined by the Java 2 Platform. The Java binding also provided a mechanism to invoke OQL.

Status

ODMG 3.0 was published in book form in 2000. By 2001, most of the major object database and object-relational mapping vendors claimed conformance to the ODMG Java Language Binding. Compliance to the other components of the specification was mixed. In 2001, the ODMG Java Language Binding was submitted to the

Java Community Process The Java Community Process (JCP), established in 1998, is a formalized mechanism that allows interested parties to develop standard technical specifications for Java technology. Anyone can become a JCP Member by filling a form available at thJCP w ...

as a basis for the

Java Data Objects Java Data Objects (JDO) is a specification of Java object persistence. One of its features is a transparency of the persistence services to the domain model. JDO persistent objects are ordinary Java programming language classes ( POJOs); there i ...

specification. The ODMG member companies then decided to concentrate their efforts on the Java Data Objects specification. As a result, the ODMG disbanded in 2001. In 2004, the

(OMG) was granted the right to revise the ODMG 3.0 specification as an OMG specification by the copyright holder, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers. In February 2006, the OMG announced the formation of the Object Database Technology Working Group (ODBT WG) and plans to work on th
4th generation of an object database standard

ODMG Compliant DBMS

*Orient ODBMS: http://www.OrienTechnologies.com *

Objectivity/DB Objectivity/DB is a commercial object database produced by Objectivity, Inc. It allows applications to make standard C++, C#, Java, or Python objects persistent without having to convert the data objects into the rows and columns used by a re ...

C++, Java and Smalltalk interfaces.

References

# ''The Object Data Standard: ODMG 3.0.'' Edited by R.G.G. Cattell and Douglas K. Barry, with contributions by Mark Berler, Jeff Eastman, David Jordan, Craig L. Russell, Olaf Schadow, Torsten Stanienda, and Fernando Velez. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Inc., 2000. . # ''Object Storage Fact Books: Object DBMSs and Object-Relational Mapping.'' Douglas K. Barry and Joshua Duhl. Barry & Associates, Inc., 2001
Pages showing the ODMG compliance for both object database and object-relational mapping products in 2001.

External links

*ODMG: http://www.odbms.org/odmg-standard/ now part of ODBMS.org {{authority control Standards organizations in the United States Databases Object-oriented programming Organizations established in 1991 1991 establishments in the United States