O2DBIWiki/IntroScope

O2DBI - Introduction - The scope of O2DBI

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Object oriented design and object oriented programming languages have been successfully used for many software projects within the last decades. The large amount of data that has to be processed within many bioinformatics applications requires an efficient and fast storage mechanism and a fast query mechanism.

O2DBI allows developers to combine both advantages and to use relational databases to store an object's data. This approach is also known as "object relational mapping". A number of implementations similar to O2DBI exists for both Perl and other programming languages, with hibernate for Java probably being the best known one. A good comparison of other mapping system for Perl is available at [1].

O2DBI was developed with respect to speed, an easy to use interface and extensibility. Due to its nature as code generator, it does not need to be bundled with applications. It does not offer the more fancy features of relational databases like transaction, locking, distributed databases etc.

Also intended as storage management layer, O2DBI also includes mechanisms to easily extend the interface of generated classes. The included design applications allows a fast and easy design of complex class hierarchies.

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Author: [2]