Multimedia Database Management Systems

211 Pages·1997·5.049 MB·English

by  B. Prabhakaran (auth.)

MULTIMEDIA DATABASE
MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
THE KLUWER INTERNATIONAL SERIES
IN ENGINEERING AND COMPUTER SCIENCE
MULTIMEDIA SYSTEMS AND APPLICATIONS
Consulting Editor
Borko Furht
Florida Atlantic University
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MULTIMEDIA DATABASE
MANAGEMENT
SYSTEMS
B. Prabhakaran
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India
and
University of Maryland at College Park, Maryland, USA
SPRINGER SCIENCE+ BUSINESS MEDIA, LLC
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available
from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-4613-7860-0 ISBN 978-1-4615-6235-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4615-6235-1
Copyright © 1997 by Springer Science+Business Media New York
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1997
Softcover reprint of the hardcover Ist edition 1997
AH rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, photo
copying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the
publisher, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.
Printed on acid-free paper.
CONTENTS
PREFACE
Vll
1 INTRODUCTION 1
1.1 Types of Multimedia Information 2
1.2 Multimedia Database Applications 3
1.3 Multimedia Objects: Characteristics 7
1.4 Multimedia Database Management System: Components 10
1.5 Concluding Remarks 21
2 MULTIMEDIA STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL 25
2.1 Multimedia Object Storage 25
2.2 File Retrieval Structures 40
2.3 Disk Scheduling 42
2.4 Server Admission Control 46
2.5 Concluding Remarks 49
3 METADATA FOR MULTIMEDIA 53
3.1 Metadata : Classification 53
3.2 Metadata for Text 57
3.3 Metadata for Speech 62
3.4 Metadata for Images 69
3.5 Metadata for Video 74
3.6 Concluding Remarks 81
4 MULTIMEDIA DATA ACCESS 85
4.1 Access to Text Data 85
4.2 Access to Speech Data 95
v
VI MULTIMEDIA DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
4.3 Access to Image Data 97
4.4 Access to Video Data 108
4.5 Concluding Remarks 112
5 MULTIMEDIA INFORMATION MODELING 117
5.1 Object-Oriented Modeling 117
5.2 Temporal Models 128
5.3 Spatial Models 134
5.4 Multimedia Authoring 136
5.5 Concluding Remarks 138
6 QUERYING MULTIMEDIA DATABASES 141
6.1 Query Processing 141
6.2 Query Languages 144
6.3 Concluding Remarks 152
7 MULTIMEDIA COMMUNICATION 155
7.1 Retrieval Schedule Generation 155
7.2 Multimedia Server-Client Interaction 162
7.3 Network Support for Multimedia Communication 168
7.4 Concluding Remarks 173
8 MMDBMS ARCHITECTURE 177
8.1 Distributed MMDBMS Architecture 177
8.2 Implementation Considerations 180
8.3 Concluding Remarks 181
REFERENCES 183
INDEX 205
PREFACE
Multimedia databases are very popular because of the wide variety of appli
cations that can be supported. These applications include Video-on-Demand
(VoD), teaching aids, multimedia document authoring systems, and shopping
guides amongst a score of many others. Multimedia databases involve accessing
and manipulating stored information belonging to different media such as text,
audio, image, and video. The distinctions between multimedia databases and
the traditional ones are due to the following characteristics of media objects :
• Sizes of the media objects (in terms of bytes of information)
• Real-time nature of the information content
• Raw or uninterpreted nature of the media information.
These characteristics in turn raise the following issues:
1. Storage of media objects needs different techniques due to the volume as
well as the real-time requirement for their fast retrieval.
2. The contents of media objects are largely binary in nature. Hence, they
have to be interpreted based on the type of media, contents of the objects,
and the needs of an application. As an example, a facial image will be
stored as a binary file. Interpretations have to be made for identifying the
features of a face such as color of hair, eyes, shape of nose, etc. These
interpretations, termed metadata, have to be automatically or semiauto
matically generated from media objects.
3. Fast access to stored multimedia information requires different indexing
techniques to be provided for handling various media objects.
4. Media objects, associated metadata, the objects' temporal and spatial
characteristics have to be modeled in such a way that they can be eas
ily manipulated.
VII
Vlll MULTIMEDIA DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
5. Accessing multimedia information is done through user queries that de
scribe the metadata associated with the objects as well as the objects'
temporal and spatial characteristics.
6. Multimedia information can be distributed over computer networks. Ac
cessing distributed multimedia data necessitates support from network ser
vice provider for communicating large media objects with real-time require
ments.
Our aim in this text is to bring out the issues and the techniques used in
building multimedia database management systems. The book is organized
as follows. In Chapter 1, we provide an overview of multimedia databases and
underline the new requirements for these applications. In Chapter 2, we discuss
the techniques used for storing and retrieving multimedia objects. In Chapter
3, we present the techniques used for generating metadata for various media
objects. In Chapter 4, we examine the mechanisms used for storing the index
information needed for accessing different media objects.
In Chapter 5, we analyze the approaches for modeling media objects, their
temporal and spatial characteristics. Object-oriented approach, with some ad
ditional features, has been widely used to model multimedia information. We
discuss two systems that use object-oriented models: OVID (Object Video
Information Database) and Jasmine. Then, we study the models for repre
senting temporal and spatial requirements of media objects. We also describe
authoring techniques used for specifying temporal and spatial characteristics of
multimedia databases. In Chapter 6, we explain different types of multimedia
queries, the methodologies for processing them and the language features for
describing them. We also study the features offered by query languages such
as SQL/MM (Structured Query Language for Multimedia), PICQUERY+, and
Video SQL. In Chapter 7, we deal with the communication requirements for
multimedia databases. A client accessing multimedia data over computer net
works needs to identify a schedule for retrieving various media objects compos
ing the database. We identify possible ways for generating a retrieval schedule.
In Chapter 8, we tie together the techniques discussed in the previous chap
ters by providing a simple architecture of a distributed multimedia database
management system.
The book can be used as a text for graduate students and researchers working in
the area of multimedia databases. It can also be used for an advanced course for
motivated undergraduates. More over, it can serve as a basic reading material
for computer professionals who are in (or moving to) the area of multimedia
databases.
Preface IX
Acknowledgment
I would like to thank Prof V.S. Subrahmanian for his encouragement. Thanks
to Selcuk for his meticulous reviews and to Eenjun for his feedback. I have
benefitted a lot by interacting with them. I learnt a lot by working with Prof
S.V. Raghavan and I thank him for that. I acknowledge Prof R. Kalyanakr
ishnan for his moral support and encouragement. Thanks to Prof. P. Venkat
Rangan for his support in many instances.
Thanks to my motivating parents, Balakrishnan and Saraswathi, for their love
and constant encouragement. Special thanks to my wonderful wife, Raji, for
her love, kindness, patience, and encouragement. That she could pitch in with
her reviews of the book was really nice. My son, Gokul, brought an entirely new
dimension to our life. His loving company and his playfulness have brought lots
of joy and happiness in our life. He even co-authored the book by his bangings
on the keyboard. Though I would like to attribute any mistakes in the book
to his co-authorship, Raji would not let me do so. I acknowledge the love and
support provided by my brothers, Sridhar and Shankar, Manni, the loving kids
Madhu and Keechu.
Finally, the research work for writing this book was supported by the Army
Research Office under grant DAAH-04-95-10174, by the Air Force Office of Sci
entific Research under grant F49620-93-1-0065, by ARPA/Rome Labs contract
Nr. F30602-93-C-0241 (Order Nr. A716), Army Research Laboratory un
der Cooperative Agreement DAALOl-96-2-0002 Federated Laboratory ATIRP
Consortium and by an NSF Young Investigator award IRI-93-57756.
B. Prabhakaran
1
INTRODUCTION
Multimedia databases can support a variety of interesting applications. Video
on-Demand (VoD), teaching aids, multimedia document authoring systems,
and shopping guides are examples of these applications. Multimedia databases
deal with storage and retrieval of information comprising of diverse media types
such as text, audio, image, and video. The following characteristics of media
objects influence multimedia database management systems.
• Large sizes This influences the storage and retrieval requirements
of media objects. In the case of distributed multimedia databases, the
communication requirements also depend on the sizes of the objects.
• Real-time nature: This factor along with the sizes of the objects
influence the storage and communication requirements.
• Raw or uninterpreted nature of information: Contents of the
media objects such as audio, image, and video are binary in nature. Hence,
multimedia databases have to derive and store interpretations about the
contents of these objects.
In this chapter, we consider typical multimedia database applications and dis
cuss how traditional database management functions such as storing, modeling,
accessmg, and querying have to be reconsidered for handling multimedia ob
jects.
1
B. Prabhakaran, Multimedia Database Management Systems
© Kluwer Academic Publishers 1997