Preface

This guide describes how to use Oracle interMedia ("interMedia").

Oracle interMedia ships with Oracle Database Standard and Enterprise Editions.

For information about Oracle Database and the features and options that are available to you, see Oracle Database New Features.

Audience

This guide is for application developers and database administrators who are interested in storing, retrieving, and manipulating audio, image, video, and heterogeneous media data in a database, including developers of audio, heterogeneous media data, image, and video specialization options.

If you are interested in an overview and how to use Oracle interMedia, see Chapter 1 for general introductory information.

For tuning tips for storing media files, see Chapter 8.

Documentation Accessibility

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Accessibility of Code Examples in Documentation

JAWS, a Windows screen reader, may not always correctly read the code examples in this document. The conventions for writing code require that closing braces should appear on an otherwise empty line; however, JAWS may not always read a line of text that consists solely of a bracket or brace.

Accessibility of Links to External Web Sites in Documentation

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Organization

This guide contains the following chapters and appendixes:

Chapter 1, " Introduction to Oracle interMedia"

Introduces multimedia and Oracle interMedia; explains multimedia-related concepts.

Chapter 2, " Application Development"

Describes Web application development environments and using interMedia in these environments.

Chapter 3, " Developing Media Upload and Retrieval Applications "

Describes developing an interMedia photo album Web application.

Chapter 4, " IMExample Java Sample Application "

Describes the IMExample Java sample application for loading, retrieving, and playing media data using the interMedia image, audio, video, and general media object types.

Chapter 5, " Content-Based Retrieval Concepts "

Explains concepts, operations, and techniques related to content-based retrieval using the interMedia image signature object type.

Chapter 6, " Custom DataSource and DataSink for JMF Versions 2.0 and 2.1"

Describes how to install, register, and use the interMedia Custom DataSource and DataSink feature, which is an extension to Java Media Framework (JMF) version 2.0 and 2.1 developed by Sun Microsystems.

Chapter 7, " Extending Oracle interMedia"

Describes how to extend interMedia to support other external sources of media data, other media data formats, and audio and video data processing.

Chapter 8, " Tuning Tips for the DBA"

Provides tuning tips for the DBA for more efficient storage of multimedia data.

Chapter 9, " interMedia Examples"

Provides basic examples of using interMedia object types and methods.

Appendix A, " Sample Programs"

Describes the sample scripts and sample programs and how to run them.

Appendix B, " Installing and Upgrading Oracle interMedia"

Describes how to install and upgrade Oracle interMedia manually.

Conventions

In this guide, Oracle interMedia is sometimes referred to as interMedia.

In examples, an implied carriage return occurs at the end of each line, unless otherwise noted. You must press the Return key at the end of a line of input.

Although Boolean is a proper noun, it is presented as boolean in this guide when its use in Java code requires case-sensitivity.

The following conventions are also used in this guide:

Convention	Meaning
. . .	Vertical ellipsis points in an example mean that information not directly related to the example has been omitted.
. . .	Horizontal ellipsis points in statements or commands mean that parts of the statement or command not directly related to the example have been omitted.
boldface text	Boldface text indicates a term defined in the text.
italic text	Italic text is used for emphasis, book titles, and variable names.
< >	Angle brackets enclose user-supplied names.
[ ]	Brackets enclose optional clauses from which you can choose one or none.

Changes to This Guide

This is a new guide for this release. It contains several chapters that were originally in Oracle interMedia User's Guide and Reference in the Oracle9i (9.0.1) release, as well as a chapter originally in Oracle interMedia Java Classes User''s Guide and Reference in the Oracle9i (9.2) release.