Class hierarchy for object aggregation representation of relational database rows with cells having nontraditional datatypes

摘要

A program product is described in which a particularly advantageous hierarchical class library is provided to permit object oriented applications to instantiate objects to access and to manipulate, in accordance with the object model, nontraditional data values of a relational table. Nontraditional datatypes of a relational table include multimedia and large object datatypes. The data is manipulable by virtue of extended data objects that each represent a cell of a relational row, and that each inherit type-specific behaviors from the class library. The class library is advantageously structured into a hierarchy that ensures the availability of certain member functions for extended data objects.