It is sometimes hard to judge which part of the object-oriented (OO) software world is changing and developing the fastest, but OO databases would be among the top five on most lists. Clearly, there is a market for a work that could help potential OODBMS selectors in the evaluation, implementation, and management of these tools. That is exactly what this book tries to do.

The book is structured in three sections. Section 1 gives terminology, briefly compares the object model with the relational model, provides a simple classification of object products, and discusses object database management system (DBMS) standards. This last should be accurate, since the author is the director of the Object Management Group, but unfortunately it is less than 20 pages long and is more an executive summary than a technical description.

Part 2 discusses the selection and implementation strategies that the author suggests are crucial. Two examples are given in two chapters of about 20 pages each, one of “feature interaction” and one about using a relational schema in an OODBMS environment. I found the latter the most interesting and informative chapter of the book. This section contains the intellectual core of the book. The text is well annotated and explained. Of particular value are the author’s pointers for further information on the topics discussed herein.

Part 3, the largest section of the book, consists entirely of checklists to be used during the selection process. They are given in shaded boxes on pages with plenty of white space. Perhaps the publisher decided a thinner book would not sell, but I find it hard to understand why so much paper was wasted to so little purpose. It also seems that much of this material is an advertisement for the author’s consulting services, whose contact information for help in applying the checklists is given in the latter part of the book, although there is nothing wrong with this.

All this said, who is the audience? This book is not useful for the OO neophyte. There is much better material elsewhere [1,2]. This is not a book to use in developing analyses of applications in OO domains. Again, there are better sources [3]. However, if I were a manager seeking more information on OO databases, or if I were assigned by my manager to look into OO databases and come up with a few recommendations, I would read this book. It provides useful information on a new and quickly changing domain.