An Object - Oriented Approach to Astronomical DatabasesR

The rate at which we can acquire astronomical data out-strips our ability to manipulate and interpret it using standard techniques. Future digital astronomical surveys will enter the terabyte regime. In addition, the actual data themselves will be complex, comprising images and spectra, as well as the traditional measured attributes. We describe here an implementation of a prototype object-oriented database, distributed in a client-server framework that is capable of both handling these volumes of data and facilitating geometric queries in an eecient manner.