Iris is an object-oriented database management system being developed at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories [1], [3]. This videotape provides an overview of the Iris data model and a summary of our experiences in converting a computer-integrated manufacturing application to Iris. An abstract of the videotape follows.

Cl History.The universal relation (UR) concept emerged in the late 1970s as a branch of relational database theory, but was substantially different in character.The hallmark of relational theory is rigor.The objects of that theory are

Although central to the current direction of dependency theory, the assumption of a universal relation is incompatible with some aspects of relational database theory and practice. Furthermore, the universal relation is itself ill defined in some important ways. And, under the universal relation assumption, the decomposition approach to database design becomes virtually indistinguishable from the synthetic approach.

Record structures are generally efficient, familiar, and easy to use for most current data processing applications. But they are not complete in their ability to represent information, nor are they fully self-describing.