Conclusion

Oracle has done a remarkable job bringing the object-oriented model to the database world. Although not a true object-oriented database, Oracle has realized many of the important object-oriented concepts in its object-relational database system. Among these, Oracle has employed inheritance, abstraction, and encapsulation through the use of user defined object types. This paper described the techniques by which Oracle’s object-oriented model can be implemented. The use of these object-oriented capabilities have in effect turned the traditional relational model and the traditional view of normalization on its head ushering in a new paradigm in database management systems.
There are two major factors that will make the object-oriented model in Oracle become the standard methodology in database design. As a new generation of application developers who have been developing using object-oriented practices continue to mature through the ranks of their professions and as more database architects begin to model new database systems on the object-oriented model, a shift from the relational to the object-oriented model will take place. This shift will in effect cause a change in how database management systems are taught and learned. The object-oriented aspects of Oracle’s database system will be taught and learned first while the more thorough aspects of the relational model will be learned only to support legacy systems.