The aim of this book is to create a consistent view of object-oriented databases, by describing Jasmine, a research prototype object-oriented database system. Jasmine is designed to accomplish the following: (1) natural modeling of complex data, (2) natural modeling of behaviors associated with complex data, (3) flexible manipulation of large amount of complex data, and (4) reasonable performance in storing and accessing a large amount of complex data.

The technological foundations of Jasmine are presented illustrating its capability of integrating a query language facility (set-oriented access) and a programming facility (individual access) as well as taking advantage of numerous relational technologies.

This book provides the fundamental concepts, functionality, and implementation of object-oriented databases to graduate and undergraduate students in advanced database courses. It will also be helpful for designers and implementors to obtain sufficient knowledge of Jasmine applications.