AIV Extenders

Audio, Image, and Video (AIV) Extenders provide extensions to SQL to assist in managing multimedia data stored in a database. They each provide functions useful for retrieving, playing, and querying properties of their respective data types. They are a useful addition to have when storing multimedia data in a database.

Storing Multimedia Data

Visual and audio data are becoming more common in databases. For example, when selling products online, customers want to see or hear the product. Databases can help facilitate organizing and retrieving multimedia data. BLOBs store large collections of binary data. This data can be an image, a video, or an audio clip. Image, video, and audio files have specific format headings that store properties of the data. Standard SQL does not understand these file formats. For example, it is not aware of the file format, image dimensions, or music duration. Therefore, it cannot use this information in SQL queries. Without knowing this information, multimedia data can be difficult to manage inside a database.

Managing Multimedia Data

AIV Extenders provide a powerful tool kit of functions used to interpret, manage, and manipulate multimedia data. DB2 Extenders interpret popular multimedia file formats and can make this information available with SQL queries. It also has some features that are helpful for Internet applications. For example, if performing an online search and more than one item is found, AIV Extenders can be used to generate thumbnails, smaller versions of the original pictures, for faster Web page loading.