Multimedia Database

http://www.topbits.com/multimedia-database.html

A multimedia database is a database that hosts one or more primary media file types such as .txt
(documents), .jpg (images), .swf (videos), .mp3 (audio), etc. And loosely fall into three main categories:

Static media (time-independent, i.e. images and handwriting)

Dynamic media (time-dependent, i.e. video and sound bytes)

Dimensional media (i.e. 3D games or computer-aided drafting programs- CAD)

All primary media files are stored in binary strings of zeros and ones, and are encoded according to file
type.
The term "data" is typically referenced from the computer point of view, whereas the term "multimedia" is
referenced from the user point of view.

Types of Multimedia Databases

There are numerous different types of multimedia databases, including:

The Authentication Multimedia Database (also known as a Verification Multimedia Database, i.e. retina
scanning), is a 1:1 data comparison

The Identification Multimedia Database is a data comparison of one-to-many (i.e. passwords and personal
identification numbers

A newly-emerging type of multimedia database, is the Biometrics Multimedia Database; which specializes in
automatic human verification based on the algorithms of their behavioral or physiological profile.

This method of identification is superior to traditional multimedia database methods requiring the typical
input of personal identification numbers and passwordsDue to the fact that the person being identified does not need to be physically present, where the
identification check is taking place.
This removes the need for the person being scanned to remember a PIN or password. Fingerprint
identification technology is also based on this type of multimedia database.

Difficulties Involved with Multimedia Databases

The difficulty of making these different types of multimedia databases readily accessible to humans is:

The tremendous amount of bandwidth they consume;

Creating Globally-accepted data-handling platforms, such as Joomla, and the special considerations that

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these new multimedia database structures require.

Creating a Globally-accepted operating system, including applicable storage and resource management
programs need to accommodate the vast Global multimedia information hunger.

Multimedia databases need to take into accommodate various human interfaces to handle 3D-interactive
objects, in an logically-perceived manner (i.e. SecondLife.com).

Accommodating the vast resources required to utilize artificial intelligence to it's fullest potential- including
computer sight and sound analysis methods.

The historic relational databases (i.e the Binary Large Objects - BLOBs- developed for SQL databases to
store multimedia data) do not conveniently support content-based searches for multimedia content.

This is due to the relational database not being able to recognize the internal structure of a Binary Large
Object and therefore internal multimedia data components cannot be retrieved...
Basically, a relational database is an "everything or nothing" structure- with files retrieved and stored as a
whole, which makes a relational database completely inefficient for making multimedia data easily
accessible to humans.
In order to effectively accommodate multimedia data, a database management system, such as an Object
Oriented Database (OODB) or Object Relational Database Management System (ORDBMS).
Examples of Object Relational Database Management Systems include Odaptor (HP): UniSQL, ODB-II,
and Illustra.
The flip-side of the coin, is that unlike non-multimedia data stored in relational databases, multimedia data
cannot be easily indexed, retrieved or classified, except by way of social bookmarking and ranking-rating,
by actual humans.
This is made possible by metadata retrieval methods, commonly referred to as tags, and tagging. This is
why you can search for dogs, as an example, and a picture comes up based on your text search tem.
This is also referred to a schematic mode. Whereas doing a search with a picture of a dog to locate other
dog pictures is referred to as paradigmatic mode.
However, metadata retrieval, search, and identify methods severely lack in being able to properly define
uniform space and texture descriptions, such as the spatial relationships between 3D objects, etc.
The Content-Based Retrieval multimedia database search method (CBR), however, is specifically based
on these types of searches. In other words, if you were to search an image or sub-image; you would then
be shown other images or sub-images that related in some way to your the particular search, by way of
color ratio or pattern, etc

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http://www.peterindia.net/MultimediaDatabase.html

Multimedia Database
Multimedia data typically means digital images, audio, video, animation and graphics together
with text data. The acquisition, generation, storage and processing of multimedia data in computers and
transmission over networks have grown tremendously in the recent past.
This astonishing growth 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.
Multimedia data are blessed with a number of exciting features. They can provide more effective
dissemination of information in science, engineering , medicine, modern biology, and social sciences. It
also facilitates the development of new paradigms in distance learning, and interactive personal and
group entertainment.
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.
MultiMedia Databases (MMDBs) have to cope up with the increased usage of a large volume of
multimedia data being used in various software applications. The applications include digital libraries,
manufacturing and retailing, art and entertainment, journalism and so on. Some inherent qualities of
multimedia data have both direct and indirect influence on the design and development of a multimedia
database. MMDBs are supposed to provide almost all the functionalities, a traditional database provides.
Apart from those, a MMDB has to provide some new and enhanced functionalities and features. MMDBs
are required to provide unified frameworks for storing, processing, retrieving, transmitting and presenting
a variety of media data types in a wide variety of formats. At the same time, they must adhere to
numerical constraints that are normally not found in traditional databases.

Contents of MMDB
An MMDB needs to manage several different types of information pertaining to the actual

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multimedia data. They are:

Media data - This is the actual data representing images, audio, video that are captured, digitized,
processes, compressed and stored.

Media format data - This contains information pertaining to the format of the media data after it
goes through the acquisition, processing, and encoding phases. For instance, this consists of
information such as the sampling rate, resolution, frame rate, encoding scheme etc.

Media keyword data - This contains the keyword descriptions, usually relating to the generation of
the media data. For example, for a video, this might include the date, time, and place of recording
, the person who recorded, the scene that is recorded, etc This is also called as content
descriptive data.

Media feature data - This contains the features derived from the media data. A feature
characterizes the media contents. For example, this could contain information about the
distribution of colors, the kinds of textures and the different shapes present in an image. This is
also referred to as content dependent data.
The last three types are called meta data as they describe several different aspects of
the media data. The media keyword data and media feature data are used as indices for
searching purpose. The media format data is used to present the retrieved information.

Designing MMDBs
Many inherent characteristics of multimedia data have direct and indirect impacts on the design
of MMDBs. These include : the huge size of MMDBs, temporal nature, richness of content, complexity of
representation and subjective interpretation. The major challenges in designing multimedia databases
arise from several requirements they need to satisfy such as the following:
1. Manage different types of input, output, and storage devices. Data input can be from a variety of
devices such as scanners, digital camera for images, microphone, MIDI devices for audio, video
cameras. Typical output devices are high-resolution monitors for images and video, and speakers
for audio.
2. Handle a variety of data compression and storage formats. The data encoding has a variety of
formats even within a single application. For instance, in medical applications, the MRI images of
brain has lossless or very stringent quality of lossy coding technique, while the X-ray images of
bones can be less stringent. Also, the radiological image data, the ECG data, other patient data,
etc. have widely varying formats.
3. Support different computing platforms and operating systems. Different users operate computers
and devices suited to their needs and tastes. But they need the same kind of user-level view of
the database.
4. Integrate different data models. Some data such as numeric and textual data are best handled
using a relational database model, while some others such as video documents are better
handled using an object-oriented database model. So these two models should coexist together
in MMDBs.
5. Offer a variety of user-friendly query systems suited to different kinds of media. From a user point

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of view, easy-to-use queries and fast and accurate retrieval of information is highly desirable. The
query for the same item can be in different forms. For example, a portion of interest in a video can
be queried by using either
1) a few sample video frames as an example,
2) a clip of the corresponding audio track or
3) a textual description using keywords.
6. Handle different kinds of indices. The inexact and subjective nature of multimedia data has
rendered keyword-based indices and exact and range searches used in traditional databases
ineffective. For example, the retrieval of records of persons based on social security number is
precisely defined, but the retrieval of records of persons having certain facial features from a
database of facial images requires, content-based queries and similarity-based retrievals. This
requires indices that are content dependent, in addition to key-word indices.
7. Develop measures of data similarity that correspond well with perceptual similarity. Measures of
similarity for different media types need to be quantified to correspond well with the perceptual
similarity of objects of those data types. These need to be incorporated into the search process
8. Provide transparent view of geographically distributed data. MMDBs are likely to be a distributed
nature. The media data resides in many different storage units possibly spread out
geographically. This is partly due to the changing nature of computation and computing resources
from centralized to networked and distributed.
9. Adhere to real-time constraints for the transmission of media data. Video and audio are inherently
temporal in nature. For example, the frames of a video need to be presented at the rate of at
least 30 frames/sec. for the eye to perceive continuity in the video.
10. Synchronize different media types while presenting to user. It is likely that different media types
corresponding to a single multimedia object are stored in different formats, on different devices,
and have different rates of transfer. Thus they need to be periodically synchronized for
presentation.
The recent growth in using multimedia data in applications has been phenomenal. Multimedia
databases are essential for efficient management and effective use of huge amounts of data. The
diversity of applications using multimedia data, the rapidly changing technology, and the inherent
complexities in the semantic representation, interpretation and comparison for similarity pose many
challenges. MMDBs are still in their infancy. Today's MMDBs are closely bound to narrow application
areas. The experiences acquired from developing and using novel multimedia applications will help
advance the multimedia database technology.

Mobile database system architecture

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_database

For any mobile architecture, things to be considered are:

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Users are not attached to a fixed geographical location

Mobile computing devices: low-power, low-cost, portable

Wireless networks

Mobile computing constraints

[edit] Three parties

Mobile databases typically involve three parties: fixed hosts, mobile units, and base
stations. Fixed hosts perform the transaction and data management functions with the help of
database servers. Mobile units are portable computers that move around a geographical region
that includes the cellular network (or "cells") that these units use to communicate to base
stations. (Note that these networks need not be cellular telephone networks.) Base stations are
two-way radios, installations in fixed locations, that pass communications with the mobile units
to and from the fixed hosts. They are typically low-power devices such as mobile phones,
portable phones, or wireless routers.

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When a mobile unit leaves a cell serviced by a particular base station, that station
transparently transfers the responsibility for the mobile unit's transaction and data support to
whichever base station covers the mobile unit's new location.

1. Draw and describe an architecture for video database system consisting

spatial and temporal abstractions.
2. Draw and describe Software Architecture of a Multimedia Database
Management System consisting Text, Image, Video and Audio database.
3. Draw and describe Distributed Multimedia Database Systems architecture.
4. Draw and describe Mobile database system architecture.

a. List and explain, at least five, characteristics of multimedia data that have direct and
indirect impacts on the design of MMDBs.

b. List and explain the four different types of information pertaining to the actual multimedia
data that needs to be managed by MMDB.

c. What do you understand by Biometric multimedia database? Explain its

application areas.
d. What do you understand by Authentication Multimedia Database? Explain its
application areas.
e. What do you understand by Identification Multimedia Database? Explain its
application areas.
f. Describe how MMDB cope up with the increased usage of a large volume of
multimedia data being used in various software applications.
g. Give few examples, at least 3, of types of applications that can benefit from
using XML. How are they benefited?

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