Multimedia Databases

1) Introduction
A multimedia database stores images, audio, and video data, and is used in applications such as picture content-based retrieval, voice-mail systems, video-on-demand systems, the World Wide Web, and speech-based user interfaces. The growth in multimedia databases is made possible by three factors: Firstly, personal computers usage becomes widespread and their computational power gets increased. Also technological advancements resulted in high resolution devices, which can capture and display multimedia data (digital cameras, scanners, monitors, and printers). Also there came high-density storage devices. Secondly high-speed data communication networks are available nowadays. The Web has wildly proliferated and software for manipulating multimedia data is now available. Lastly, some specific applications (existing) and future applications need to live with multimedia data. This trend is expected to go up in the days to come. The huge amount of data in different multimedia-related applications warranted to have databases as databases provide consistency, concurrency, integrity, security and availability of data. From an user perspective, databases provide functionalities for the easy manipulation, query and retrieval of highly relevant information from huge collections of stored data.

2) How is Multimedia Data Different?

Conceptually it should be possible to treat multimedia data in the same way as data based on the data types (e.g. numbers, dates and characters).However, there are few challenges that arises from multimedia data: The content of multimedia data is often captured with different capture techniques (e.g., image processing) that may be rather unreliable. Multimedia processing techniques need to be able to handle different ways of content capture including automated ways and/or manual methods. Queries posed by the user in multimedia databases often cannot come back with a textual answer. Rather, the answer to a query may be a complex multimedia presentation that the user can browse at his/her leisure. Multimedia data is large and affects the storage, retrieval and transmission of multimedia data. In case of video and audio databases time to retrieve information may be critical example: Video on demand. Automatic feature extraction and Indexing: In conventional databases user explicitly submits the attribute values of objects inserted into the database.

In contrast, advanced tools such as image processing and pattern recognition tools for images, to extract the various features and content of multimedia objects. As size of data is very large we need special data structures for storing and indexing.

3) Storage and retrieval of MM-Data:

For the Storage: a) Input of MM objects b) Composition (to multimedia objects) (example: authoring systems) c) Archive of data (in hardware and format independent way) For the Retrieval: a) Support of complex search b) Efficiency (indices etc.) c) Evaluation (aggregation, filtering) d) Preview e) Also conversions (needed to gain or lead to hardware and format independence) For the Update Only replace or also edit.

4) Capabilities of Multimedia Database Systems

1. Support of multimedia data types, i.e. data types as data structures, including type of data and operations 2. Capability to manage very numerous multimedia objects, store them and search for them 3. To include a suitable memory management system, to improve performance, high capacity, cost optimization

5) Multimedia Database System features:

a) b) c) d) e) f) g) h) Persistency Transaction concept Multi-user capability Recovery Ad-hoc queries Integrity constrains (which leads to consistency) Safety Performance

6) Advantages of Multimedia Database Systems:

a) Integrated administration of huge amounts of multimedia data b) Optimized storage c) Efficient access d) Manyfold complex search possibilities e) Referential integrity of links f) Transaction protected multi-user mode g) Recovery

7) Multimedia-DB applications:
a) Retrieval / Information / Archive (Libraries, video on demand, information systems, press, hospitals) Databases, information retrieval b) Education / Commercials/ Entertainment (School, university, professional training, games, commercials) CSE, Teachware, Courseware, CBT, c) Writing / Publications/ Design (Press, engineering, architecture) Editors, layout generators, CAD-systems d) Controlling/Monitoring (Factories, traffic, weather forecast, military) Process control systems