Why did object oriented databases fail? [closed]

Answer 1

Very subjective, but a few reasons come to mind:

1. Performance has not been as good as relational databases (or at least that's the perception)

2. Again with performance - relational databases allow you to do things like denormalizing data to further improve performance.

3. Legacy support for all the non-OO apps that need to access the data.

Answer 2

There are countless numbers of existing applications out there storing their data in relational databases. This data is the lifeblood of those companies. They have collectively invested huge amounts in storing, maintaining and reporting on this data. The cost and risk of moving this priceless information into a fundamentally different environment is extremely high.

Now consider that ORM tools can map modern application data structures into traditional relational models, and you remove pretty much any incentive to migrate to OODBMS. They provide a low-risk alternative to a very costly high risk migration.

Answer 3

Further, OOP and set-based programming are not always very comptatble. Personally, when I started reading about OO databases, I couldn't help but think "Boy, I hope I never have to work on one of those, update 1 million rows out of a 6 million row table and then make sure all appropriate records in other tables get updated as well"

Answer 4

Why not?

I guess they were a solution to a problem nobody was having, or not having enough to pay for it.

Answer 5

I think it is because the problem was solved differently. You might be using a relational database behind the scenes when you are coding in Ruby on Rails or LINQ to SQL, but it feels like you are working with objects.

Answer 6

Probably because of their coupling with specific programming languages.