Client-server computing is only now able to deliver genuine gains to broadcasters, publishers, creative agencies and production facilities. These new users are entering the distributed computing domain just as media object technologies and commercial broadband services emerge from infancy. This paper discusses the complex process of decision-making and system design for digital media asset management. The Cinebase Digital Media Management System is described and used to illustrate critical points. The digital media server architecture must accommodate extremely large datasets, scaleable content retrieval and rapid network query response. Cinebase installations are currently in place containing 100s of Terabytes of media content, and 100s of local and remote users. Cinebase has recently been ported to ObjectStore by Object Design Inc. (ODI). The presentation discusses how, in combination, the Cinebase application and ODI extensions can be used to deliver a complete object management environment for production-quality content. Examples of the new workflows, and the technical issues complex networks raise for database architecture, are also discussed.