PressBase:: A presentation synchronization database for distributed multimedia systems

Multimedia presentations are the basic objects of multimedia databases. Since a multimedia presentation is not an instant display of a query result, the control knowledge (or synchronization requirements) has to be incorporated into the database and necessary precautions have to be taken for a lengthy presentation. Active databases provide a mechanism for incorporation of control knowledge by using event-condition-action (ECA) rules. In this paper, we describe how multimedia synchronization can be handled within a database using ECA rules. We present a prototype presentation synchronization database, named as PressBase, for distributed multimedia systems. We have adopted one of the synchronization models, SynchRuler [5], and then incorporated into a relational database system.