capabilities to their standard RDBMS software systems
to create hybrid object-relational DBMS (ORDBMS). An
ORDBMS can be thought of as an RDBMS engine with
an extensibility framework for handling objects. They can
handle both the data describing what an object is (object
attributes such as color, size, and age) and the behavior
that determines what an object does (object methods or
functions such as drawing instructions, query interfaces,
and interpolation algorithms) and these can be managed
and stored together as an integrated whole. Examples
of ORDBMS software include IBM DB2 and Informix
Dynamic Server, Microsoft SQL Server, and Oracle. As
ORDBMS and the underlying relational model are so
important in GIS, these topics are discussed at length in
Section 10.3.