An image-oriented database system

Abstract

This paper describes the concepts and facilities of interactive database system named ADM (Aggregate Data Manager), which facilitates the unified handling of image data and conventional coded data.

The basic idea of this system is that, regarding ‘image’ as one of the data-types, each image is treated as a data element like a number or a character string within the framework of a relational database. This approach enables the usage of a simple but powerful relational data language for storage and retrieval of both coded data and image data in a unified way. Image data handled by this system are categorized into two classes, i.e. binary images and gray-tone images.

For the purpose of image data manipulation, Image Editor is provided, which supports basic image editing functions common to most image-oriented applications. On the other hand, to meet diverse requirements of image processing, an extension facility is provided, with which users can add their own commands and processing functions.