Digital data can be broken down into structured and unstructured data. Unstructured data outweighs structured by 10 to 1. The most well known unstructured data type is multimedia, which comprises digital images, audio, video, and documents.
For a very long time the topic of unstructured data and managing it has been pushed to the side lines and given the label of being just too hard to deal with. More time and attention has been given to relational data, which has been analyzed, conceptualized, and understood since it was first mathematically defined in the 1970s. Since then the market has changed. New technologies have introduced new rules and requirements for dealing with unstructured data. Structured data, which has been leading the market as a subset called relational data, shows to have limitations. It cannot encompass, correctly describe, and manage the large variety of multimedia types appearing in the market. The move to adapt to new technologies that interface more directly with people has shown that smart media is friendlier and easier to understand.
With the iPhone, iPad, Android, and equivalent smart devices now proliferating in the market, the whole world has been given access to computers. Sidelined are the complex, virus-prone PCs that a large number of people could never comprehend or correctly use. The multimedia centric iPad is a device that most people can learn in minutes and master in under an hour. The keyboard is nearly gone and digital images, video, and audio give a richer, entertaining, and a more productive environment to work in.
Structured data isn't gone. Its importance cannot be overlooked. It is just not the dominant data structure anymore that we have been taught to believe. What is yet to be realized when it comes to the future of computer human interfaces, is that its existence is really there to support unstructured data. To give it extra meaning and to enhance its use. The key factor to realize and what this book will show, is that structured data is not the pinnacle of data management. It has an important role, but its role is to provide a solid foundation and core base for which unstructured data can work on.
The aim of this book is to try and give a basic understanding to a lot of concepts involving unstructured data. Particular focus is given to multimedia (smart media or rich media). This is the most popular and well understood subtype of unstructured data in the market place today. The book will cover key concepts from first principles. Later chapters are designed for database administrators though developers and storage architects can gain a good understanding on the key concepts covered. An attempt has been made to future proof some chapters so that as technology changes, the core concepts can be remolded and adapted to meet those changes. Where areas are deemed immutable, they are highlighted so the reader can be aware that these ideas can become dated or need to be reviewed to assess their validity as technology changes.
This is the first of two books in the series. The first book is designed for technology architects, managers, and database administrators. The second book will focus on developers and storage architects. It will cover methods for building multimedia databases and techniques for working with very large databases.
This book uses the Oracle 11g R2 database as the core database. Special sections are devoted to adapting the concepts covered for the Oracle 11 XE release.
Some of the chapters draw citations from Wikipedia. These citations are additional to the ones provided and are there for those who make extensive use of Wikipedia. In a number of cases the citations given are to highlight that useful information is found at the site rather than justifying a particular claim. As the topics covering multimedia are very new and in some cases have only been released in the last one to two years, the most accurate and up to date information on them can be found at the Wiki site.
The exercises found at the end of each chapter are purposely designed so that the answers to them are not found in the book or on the Internet. The lessons and techniques gained from reading the chapter will provide the necessary solution to each exercise, but the reader will need to use their skill and experience to correctly determine the answer. All exercises have valid answers but they are deliberately not included. Answers will be provided in the second book. This book will cover developer and programming topics, disk storage and techniques for integration of multimedia using a variety of programming tools, including Java, PHP, C, C++, Perl, Python, Ruby, PL/SQL and Visual Basic.
Chapter 1, What is Unstructured Data?, covers what a digital object is from first principles. This chapter will provide the reader with new insights into the basics of unstructured data.
Chapter 2, Understanding Digital Objects, answers all the questions generally raised about multimedia objects. This chapter takes the reader through all the different types of smart media currently being used and how they can work with them intelligently.
Chapter 3, The Multimedia Warehouse, discusses all the concepts behind a multimedia warehouse and how it differs from a relational data warehouse, using real life case scenarios.
Chapter 4, Searching the Multimedia Warehouse, continues from the previous chapter. This chapter takes the reader further into the multimedia warehouse architecture and explorers all the issues behind doing simple and complex searches and then how to best display the results.
Chapter 5, Loading Techniques, will help storage and database administrators learn about all the different techniques and database issues involved in loading large numbers of digital objects into a database.
Chapter 6, Delivery Techniques, covers all the concepts behind setting an e-commerce system and delivering digital objects. Learn about copyright management, protection from privacy, price books, business rules, and processing workflows.
Chapter 7, Techniques for Creating a Multimedia Database, will help the Oracle Database Administrators and Developers to learn how to configure an Oracle Database and web server for managing multimedia. They will discover which database parameter and storage configuration settings work and why they work.
Chapter 8, Tuning, will help the Oracle Database administrators learn new concepts, skills, and techniques that are required to manage very large multimedia databases.
Chapter 9, Understanding the Limitations of Oracle Products, gives an overview of all the Oracle products and key features and helps you learn how well each one works with multimedia. Readers will also begin to appreciate what is truly involved in the real configuration and setup of a multimedia based database.
Chapter 10, Working with the Operating System, will help database administrators and developers gain a better understanding of how to extend the Oracle database to work and integrate with open source code. This is generally required to perform additional and complex processing, which is currently beyond the normal bounds of the Oracle Database.
Appendix A, The Circa Data Type, describes the Circa datatype syntax.
Appendix B, Multimedia Case Studies, has eight case studies listed that are based on real-life sites in countries around the world. The details have been generalized and simplified to make the underlying architecture simpler to understand.
Appendix C, Proactive Database Tuning, explains the relation between the environment and the DBA. It covers various topics that revolve around proactive database tuning, such as Ensuring optimal performance, Cyclic maintenance, Database review, Forecasting, Securing the database, and Data recovery.
Appendix D, Chapter References, has the list of references that are marked in the individual chapters.
Appendix E, Loading and Reading, is not present in the book but is available for download at the following link: http://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/AppendixE_loading_and_reading.pdf
If you are an Oracle database administrator, museum curator, IT manager, developer, photographer, Intelligence team member, warehouse or software architect then this book is for you. It covers the basics and then moves to advanced concepts. This will challenge and increase your knowledge enabling all those who read it to gain a greater understanding of multimedia and how all unstructured data is managed.
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text are shown as follows: "We can include other contexts through the use of the include directive."
A block of code is set as follows:
myimage ORDSYS.ORDIMAGE … begin myimage := NULL;
When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:
myimage ORDSYS.ORDIMAGE
…
begin
myimage := NULL;
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Clicking the Next button moves you to the next screen".
There are few words/phrases marked with numbers in superscript. For example, (commonly referred to as being photoshopped)(1), color space(2), and so on. You can find more information on these concepts at the links given in Appendix D, Chapter References.
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