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Image, Audio, and Video Extenders Administration and Programming

Administrative support tables

Administrative support tables, also called metadata tables, contain the information that the extenders need to process user requests on image, audio, and video objects. The information in administrative support tables is often referred to as "metadata".

As the following figure illustrates, some of the administrative support tables identify user tables and columns that are enabled for an extender. These tables reference other administrative support tables that are created to hold attribute information about objects in enabled columns. In these tables, the extenders maintain information about attributes that are unique to a particular extender-defined data type, as well as information about attributes that are common across extender data types. For example, the Image Extender maintains information about the width, height, and number of colors in an image, as well as information about attributes common to image, audio, and video objects, such as the identification of the person who imported the object into the database or who last updated the object.

The administrative support tables can also contain the contents of stored objects in BLOB format. Alternatively, an object can be kept in a file and referenced by the administrative support tables. For example, a video clip can be stored as a BLOB in an administrative support table or kept in a file that is referenced by the table.

Figure 7. Administrative support tables


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