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 on 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

• Getting and managing multimedia data from Oracle interMedia, Web servers, file systems, and other servers

• Performing manipulation operations on image data

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.