1 Introduction to Oracle Multimedia

Oracle Multimedia (formerly Oracle interMedia) enables Oracle Database to store, manage, and retrieve images, DICOM format medical images and other objects, audio, video, or other heterogeneous media data in an integrated fashion with other enterprise information.

Oracle Multimedia extends Oracle Database reliability, availability, and data management to multimedia content in traditional, medical, Internet, electronic commerce, and media-rich applications.

See Also:

• Oracle Multimedia User's Guide for conceptual information and information about application development

• Oracle Multimedia DICOM Developer's Guide for more information about Oracle Multimedia DICOM support

1.1 About Multimedia PL/SQL Packages

Oracle Multimedia provides the ORD_AUDIO, ORD_DOC, ORD_IMAGE, and ORD_VIDEO PL/SQL packages, which contain functions and procedures for managing image, audio, and video data stored in BLOBs and BFILEs in Oracle Database. Developers can use these PL/SQL packages to include common operations such as these in their applications:

• Extracting information directly from multimedia data, either as an XML string or as XML and individual attributes

• Exporting multimedia data from Oracle Database into operating system files

• Loading multimedia data from operating system files into Oracle Database

• Creating thumbnail images

• Cropping images

• Converting images to Web-compatible formats

See the following chapters for more information about these Oracle Multimedia PL/SQL packages:

• Procedures Common to All Oracle Multimedia PL/SQL Package APIs

• Oracle Multimedia ORD_AUDIO PL/SQL Package

• Oracle Multimedia ORD_DOC PL/SQL Package

• Oracle Multimedia ORD_IMAGE PL/SQL Package

• Oracle Multimedia ORD_VIDEO PL/SQL Package

1.2 Multimedia Object Types and Methods

Oracle Multimedia provides the ORDAudio, ORDDoc, ORDImage, 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 Multimedia, Web servers, file systems, and other servers

• Performing manipulation operations on image data

Oracle Multimedia also provides the ORDDicom object type and methods for storing, managing, and manipulating DICOM format medical images and other data.

SQL Syntax for Complex Objects

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 Also:

Oracle Database Concepts for more information about complex objects

1.3 Multimedia Storage

Oracle Multimedia 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:

Do not call ORDSource methods 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.

See Oracle Multimedia ORDSource Object Type for more information about ORDSource methods.