1. A protocol for evaluating an OODBMS Master thesis in Computer Science Anders Carlsson

2. Introduction Databases are central parts of todays computer and software systems. Explore what are the features of the system that influence the choice of system.

3. Problem description Many different OODBMS available. Wide range of functionality on different systems. Lack of time to evaluate many systems. => A method for faster system evaluation is needed.

4. Research questions What features are important when selecting which object oriented database management system to use? How important are these features compared to each other?

5. Goal: Protocol Is to be used when evaluating an OODBMS. Describes… …what features are important. …how important the features are.

6. Research process Preliminary activities Literature study Interviews Survey on DBMS Survey on OODBMS Protocol elaboration Evaluation of the results

7. Literature survey Goal: Deepen the understanding of database management systems. Books and databases at the Infocenter. Papers and articles on the Internet.

8. Interviews Goal: Verify the correctness of the results from the literature survey. Two database administrators. One system developer. One person - both DBA and developer. Three students at BTH.

9. Survey on DBMS Goal: Verify earlier results and give a rate on how important the features are. Web based. Sent out to 134 companies, 123 in IT- business.

10. Survey on OODBMS Goal: Verify earlier results and give a rate on how important the features are. Web based. Sent out to four people with experience on working with OODBMS.

11. Results List of mandatory features for an OODBMS. List of features not mandatory, with rating on importance. Protocol for evaluation of an OODBMS. Guideline on how to use and compare results.

12. Protocol Containes a description of how to perform a certain task. Includes information on how to use results from protocol implementation. Some parts are fixed and some open.

13. Reliability: Feature list Very reliable. Compound from a wide range of literature and empirical data from the industry.

14. Reliability: Importance rate People involved in answering the surveys have experience on working with databases for at least 5 years. Reliability could be improved by… …gathering more answers to survey than is the case now. …perform new interviews regarding the found rate.

15. Validity Valid only for guidance in selecting systems for further investigation. The protocol is not a complete evaluation tool. Lack of statistical support for importance rating.

16. Future work Increase reliability of importance rating; conduct new surveys. Evaluate a number of systems according to the protocol to get empirical data on its validity.

17. Questions Project web site: www.oodb.actk.net