FRAMERD - REPRESENTING KNOWLEDGE IN THE LARGE

Content-aware media applications require rich, interconnected descript ions of media content. FramerD is an object-oriented database develope d at the MIT Media Laboratory to support just such descriptions in a s calable and distributed manner. Conventional databases, even the newer object-oriented ones, focus mostly on data structures whose component s are scalar or literal values, rather than references to other object s. FramerD is optimized to support objects that have components consis ting of references to other objects in an environment where the storag e of and the operations over the objects are distributed over local- a nd wide-area networks. This paper discusses the design, implementation , and performance of FramerD, and sketches some current applications o f the system.