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Managing Multimedia and
Unstructured Data in the
Oracle Database
A revolutionary approach to understanding,
managing, and delivering digital objects, assets,
and all types of data
Marcelle Kratochvil
professional expertise distilled
P U B L I S H I N G
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
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Managing Multimedia and Unstructured Data in the
Oracle Database
Copyright © 2013 Packt Publishing
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However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: March 2013
Production Reference: 1110313
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
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Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.
ISBN 978-1-84968-692-1
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Cover Image by Artie Ng ([email protected])
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Credits
Author Project Coordinator
Marcelle Kratochvil Leena Purkait
Reviewers Proofreaders
Gokhan Atil Ting Baker
Ben van Eyle Lindsey Thomas
Satishbabu Gunukula
Tim Hall Indexer
Monica Ajmera Mehta
Pete Sharman
Graphics
Acquisition Editor
Aditi Gajjar
Rukhsana Khambatta
Sheetal Aute
Valentina D'silva
Lead Technical Editor
Arun Nadar
Production Coordinator
Aparna Bhagat
Technical Editors
Sharvari Baet
Kaustubh S. Mayekar Cover Work
Aparna Bhagat
Ankita Meshram
Nitesh Thakur
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About the Author
Marcelle Kratochvil is an accomplished Oracle Database administrator and
developer. She is CTO of Piction and has designed and developed industry-leading
software for the management and selling of digital assets. She has also developed
an award-winning shipping and freight management system, designed and built a
booking system, a digital asset management system, a sport management system,
an e-commerce system, a social network engine, a reporting engine, and numerous
search engines. She has been an Oracle beta tester since the original introduction
of Oracle Multimedia. She is also a well known presenter at Oracle Conferences
and has produced numerous technical podcasts. In 2004 she was the Oracle PL/
SQL Developer of the year. Born in Australia, she lives in Canberra. She is actively
working as a database administrator supporting a large number of customer sites
internationally. She is also campaigning with Oracle to promote the use of storing
all data and any data in a database. In her spare time she plays field hockey and
does core research in artificial intelligence in database systems. She has a Bachelor of
Science Degree from the Australian National University and majored in computing
and mathematics.
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Acknowledgement
I would like to acknowledge my business partner and CEO of Piction, Erick Kendrick.
I have been working with him for over twelve years and he has been instrumental in
a lot of the designs as well as the implementation of the ideas presented in the book.
Without his unconditional support in all the good and bad times, the ability to get to
the stage of writing this book would not have been possible.
Special thanks go to all those in the Piction team: Jimmy Nguyen, Martin Channon,
Serkan Harar, Lusana Ali, and Adam LaPorta, who have done the tough work and
been able to embrace the vision and advance the concept of digital asset management
systems, bringing forth leadership in this new technology.
Thanks also go to Chris Muir, Richard Foote, and Tim Hall who have sparred with
me on a lot of the controversial issues that dealing with multimedia can raise. By
debating with them honestly, I have been pushed outside the box and into new
territory. In addition Steven Feuerstein has always expressed his support and helped
where he could regarding multimedia in the database. Also, I would like to thank
Victoria Lira and Lillian Buziak of the Oracle ACE Director program who over the
last five years have work tirelessly to help me promote the usage of multimedia
inside the Oracle Database.
Special mention goes to my mother, my sister, her husband, Andrew and children,
Jeremiah, Elisha, and Abigail, who have accepted me unconditionally, which also
gave me the strength and motivation to do the hard, long yards and put this book
together. I would like to recognize my brother Mark Kratochvil who worked with
Piction in the early days and is a keen and talented photographer. It is my hope that
his family will get to see this book.
I would like to acknowledge the reviewers who have been challenged by the unique
and varying content within the book. They are Ben Van Eyle, April Chin, Tim Hall,
Pete Sharman, and Tony Quinn.
And finally I would like to thank Liza Sherd who was there for me during the hard
times and who I know will be there for me when I need it the most.
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About the Reviewers
Gokhan Atil is an independent consultant who has been working in IT since 2000.
He worked as a Development and Production DBA, Trainer and Software Developer.
He has a strong background in Linux and Solaris systems. He's an Oracle Certified
Professional (OCP) for Oracle Database 10g and 11g, and has hands-on experience
with Oracle 11g/10g/9i/8i. He is an active member of the Oracle community and has
written and presented papers at various conferences. He's also a founding member
of the Turkish Oracle User Group (TROUG).
He was honored with the Oracle ACE Award in 2011. He has a blog in which he has
shared his experience with Oracle since 2008:
http://www.gokhanatil.com
Ben van Eyle is an independent consultant with 26 years of experience in the
IT industry with most of that time dealing with databases and database systems,
including Oracle, SQL Server and Ingres.
He has designed and built distributed database systems and high availability
systems, as well as worked on SAP systems and Oracle data warehouses, mostly
for government department.
Ben currently resides in Canberra.
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Satishbabu Gunukula has over 13 years of experience in the IT industry. He
has extensive experience in Oracle and SQLServer Database Technologies, and is
specialized in high availability solutions such as Oracle RAC, Data Guard, Grid
Control, and SQL Server Cluster. He has a master's degree in Computer Applications.
He has been honored with the prestigious Oracle ACE Award. He has experience
with a wide range of products, such as Essbase, Hyperion, Agile, SAP Basis, MySQL,
Linux, Windows, and Business Apps admin and he has implemented many business
critical systems for Fortune 500, 1000 companies.
He review articles for SELECT Journal – the publication of IOUG – and reviews
books for Packt Publishing. He is an active member in IOUG, Oracle RAC SIG,
UKOUG, and OOW and has published many articles and presentations. He shares
his knowledge on his websites:
http://www.oracleracexpert.com and http://www.sqlserver-expert.com.
Tim Hall is an Oracle Certified Professional (OCP) DBA/Developer, Oracle ACE
Director, OakTable Network member and was chosen as Oracle ACE of the Year
2006 by Oracle Magazine Editor's Choice Awards. He has been involved in DBA,
design, and development work with Oracle Databases since 1994.
Although focusing on database administration and PL/SQL development, he
has gained a wide knowledge of the Oracle software stack and has worked as a
consultant for several multinational companies on projects ranging from real-time
control systems to OLTP web applications.
Since the year 2000, he has published over 400 articles on his website
(www.oracle-base.com) covering a wide range of Oracle features.
Pete Sharman is a Principal Product Manager in the Enterprise Manager team at
Oracle. He has worked at Oracle for 18 years in a variety of roles both in Australia
and the USA, and has presented at a number of conferences, including Oracle Open
World, the Hotsos Symposium and RMOUG Training Days. He is also a member of
the OakTable Network.
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Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: What is Unstructured Data? 7
Digital data 9
Metadata 13
Defining unstructured data 15
Terminology 15
Image 15
Digital file 16
Digital image 16
Digital object 16
Digital content 16
Digital asset 16
Digital material 17
Digital library 17
Analyzing the digital object 17
Digital object types 20
Core types 20
Subtypes 21
Picture 21
Audio 22
Model 22
Creating new base types 22
Document 23
Video 23
Multimedia (Rich Media) 23
Data 24
Simulation 24
Genealogy 24
Virtual digital object 25
Digital object delivery 25
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