Object orientation has now invaded traditional relational database-management
systems. Oracle™ without exception has included object-oriented features
in its system. SQL is now richer due to these additional features. However,
the object-oriented elements in Oracle™ will not be fully utilized without
a proper database design. For example, a database application designed using
a traditional database modeling, such as entity-relationship (E/R) modeling,
will not be able to make use of most object-oriented features in Oracle™.
This is simply due to the absence of object-oriented elements in the design.
Even with a proper object-oriented design, without careful transformation from
design to implementation, many of the object-oriented features will be lost.

Object-Oriented Oracle™ addresses this need by not only explaining the
new object-oriented features in Oracle™, but most importantly how these
features can be fully utilized in database applications. We put a heavy emphasize
on how an object-oriented conceptual model is implemented in Oracle™.
This includes the static aspect of an object-oriented conceptual model, including
the inheritance, association, and aggregation relationships, as well as
the dynamic aspect covering generic object-oriented methods and user-defined
queries.

Just as we enjoyed writing this book, we hope that you will enjoy reading it,
and most importantly gain valuable lessons from it. We trust that this book will
give you a comprehensive insight into object-oriented Oracle™.