1 Introduction to Oracle interMedia

Oracle interMedia ("interMedia") is a feature that enables Oracle Database to store, manage, and retrieve images, audio, video, or other heterogeneous media data in an integrated fashion with other enterprise information. Oracle interMedia extends Oracle Database reliability, availability, and data management to multimedia content in traditional, Internet, electronic commerce, and media-rich applications.

See Oracle interMedia User's Guide for conceptual information and information about application development.

1.1 Multimedia Object Types and Methods

Oracle interMedia provides the ORDAudio, ORDDoc, ORDImage, ORDImageSignature, ORDVideo, and SI_StillImage object types and methods for:

Extracting metadata and attributes from multimedia data
Embedding metadata created by applications into image files
Getting and managing multimedia data from Oracle interMedia, Web servers, file systems, and other servers
Performing manipulation operations on image data

The object syntax for accessing attributes within a complex object is the dot notation (except in Java):

variable.data_attribute

The syntax for invoking methods of a complex object is also the dot notation (except in Java):

variable.function(parameter1, parameter2, ...)

In keeping with recommended programming practices, a complete set of media attribute accessors (get methods) and setters (set methods) are provided for accessing attributes for each media type.

See Oracle Database Concepts for information about this and other SQL syntax.

1.2 Multimedia Storage

Oracle interMedia provides the ORDSource object type and methods for multimedia data source manipulation. The ORDAudio, ORDDoc, ORDImage, and ORDVideo object types all contain an attribute of type ORDSource.

Note:

ORDSource methods should not be called directly. Instead, invoke the wrapper method of the media object corresponding to the ORDSource method. ORDSource method information is presented only for users who want to write their own user-defined sources.