Hitting the Relational Wall:
Object Oriented Databases vs Relational Databases

by Dr. Andrew E. Wade, PhD
47 pages, PDF format

Abstract

Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMSs) have been very successful, but their success is limited to certain types of applications. As business users expand to newer types of applications, and grow older ones, their attempts to use RDBMS encounter the "Relational Wall," where RDBMS technology no longer provides the performance and functionality needed.

This wall is encountered when extending information models to support relationships, new data types, extensible data types, and direct support of objects. Similarly, the wall appears when deploying in distributed environments with complex operations.

Attempts to scale the wall with relational technology lead to an explosion of tables, many joins, poor performance, poor scalability, and loss of integrity. ODBMSs offer a path beyond the wall. This paper measures the wall, explains what model and architectural differences cause it, how to foresee it, and how to avoid it.