Storage Support for Multidimensional Discrete Data in Multimedia Databases

Multidimensional discrete data (MDD) is enormously important for multimedia applications since diverse types of such data are used simultaneously by any multimedia application. However, multidimensional discrete data is not adequately supported by most existing database systems. In this paper we discuss the major management requirements imposed by such data on multimedia database management systems both at the conceptual level and at the internal level. At the internal level, the spatial structure of the data must also be preserved and special emphasis must be given to the efficient spatial access to subrectangels of very large data of arbitrary dimensionality. Our major contribution is the presentation of a Storage Manager for this kind of data which preserves the spatial nature of the data at the internal level of the database management system and provides efficient spatial access. This Storage Manager is based on an innovative combination of the subdivision of data in multidimensio nal tiles and of a spatial index to access those tiles. Furthermore, it supports advanced registration data. The lower level modules of the Storage Manager are responsible for the access to the data stored in secondary storage. The implementation of these modules can rely on any secondary storage access system to access data on disk. The Sorage Manager was implemented using the functionality of a relational database system. The implementation of this relational Storage Manager is presented.