Oracle Corp’s new Oracle’s Media Server database management software comprises three elements. The first is an Oracle Video Stream Server multimedia database, which has all the relational capabilities of the firm’s existing products, but can also deal with video and audio data streams. Object-oriented capabilities will be added later with the release of Oracle8. The product can store digitally compressed television programmes, films, magazines, books and catalogues, and then transmit them digitally to set-top boxes attached to television sets in the home. The second element is Oracle Media Objects, a development environment for building interactive multimedia applications, such as finders for video-on-demand and home shopping, that run on both desktop computers and set-top boxes. Media Objects is based on Oracle Media Talk, an object-oriented, English-like scripting language that has its heritage in hypertext, and runs under Microsoft Corp’s Windows and on Apple Computer Inc’s Macintosh. The third element is Oracle Media Net, a message-based protocol for linking application clients and servers via standard telephone lines.
