What is an OODBMS?

Posted on by Ian

OODBMS stands for Object-Oriented Database Management System.

An object-oriented database management system (also known simply as an object database) is a DBMS where data is represented in the form of objects, as used in object-oriented programming.

In contrast to relational database management systems (RDBMSs), where data is stored in tables with rows and columns, an object-oriented database stores complex data and relationships between data directly, without mapping to relational rows and columns.

One benefit of object-oriented databases is that, when it’s integrated with an object-oriented programming language, there is a much greater consistency between the database and the programming language. Both use the same model of representation for the data.

This is in contrast to a relational database, where, there’s a distinct difference between the database model and the programming model.

Some OODBMSs are designed to work with other programming languages (such as Java, Python, Perl, Delphi, Ruby, C#, Visual Basic .NET, C++, etc). Others have their own proprietary language.

Some DBMS are a hybrid of OODBMS and RDBMS, and are therefore referred to as object-relational databases (ORD) or object-relational database management system (ORDBMS).

OODBMS Examples

Here are some examples of OODBMSs: