Towards a Theory of Multimedia Database Systems -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Basic Ideas Underlying the Framework -- 3. Media Instances -- 4. Indexing Structures and a Query Language for Multimedia Systems -- 5. Multimedia Presentations -- 6. Related Work -- 7. Conclusions -- A Unified Approach to Data Modelling and Retrieval for a Class of Image Database Applications -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Approaches to Image Data Modeling -- 3. Requirements Analysis of Application Areas -- 4. Logical Representations -- 5. Motivations for the Proposed Data Model -- 6. An Overview of AIR Framework -- 7. Image Database Systems Based on AIR Model -- 8. Image Retrieval Applications Based on the Prototype Implementation of AIR Framework -- 9. Research Issues in AIR Framework -- 10. Conclusions and Future Direction -- A. Image Logical Structures -- The QBISM Medical Image DBMS -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The Medical Application -- 3. Logical Design -- 4. Physical Database Design -- 5. System Issues -- 6. Performance Experiments -- 7. Conclusions and Future Work -- Retrieval of Pictures Using Approximate Matching -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Picture Representation -- 3. User Interface -- 4. Computation of Similarity Values -- 5. Conclusion -- Ink as a First-Class Datatype in Multimedia Databases -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Ink as First-Class Data -- 3. Pictographic Naming -- 4. The ScriptSearch Algorithm -- 5. Searching Large Databases -- 6. Conclusions -- Indexing for Retrieval by Similarity -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Shape Matching -- 3. Word Matching -- 4. Discussion -- Filtering Distance Queries in Image Retrieval -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Spatial Access Methods and Image Retrieval -- 3. Snapshot -- 4. Filtering Metric Queries with Snapshot -- 5. Optimization of Spatial Queries -- 6. Conclusions and Future Work -- Stream-based Versus Structured Video Objects: Issues, Solutions, and Challenges -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Stream-based Presentation -- 3. Structured Presentation -- 4. Conclusion -- The Storage and Retrieval of Continuous Media Data -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Retrieving Continuous Media Data -- 3. Matrix-Based Allocation -- 4. Variable Disk Transfer Rates -- 5. Horizontal Partitioning -- 6. Vertical Partitioning -- 7. Related Work -- 8. Research Issues -- 9. Concluding Remarks -- Querying Multimedia Databases in SQL -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Automobile Multimedia Database Example -- 3. Logical Query Language -- 4. Querying Multimedia Databases in SQL -- 5. Expressing User Requests in SQL -- 6. Conclusions -- Multimedia Authoring Systems -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Underlying Technology -- 3. Sample Application - "Find-Movie" -- 4. Multimedia Toolbook 3.0 -- 5. IconAuthor 6.0 -- 6. Director 4.0 -- 7. MAS's and Current Technology -- 8. Conclusion -- Metadata for Building the Multimedia Patch Quilt -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Characterization of the Ontology -- 3. Construction and Design of Metadata -- 4. Association of Digital Media Data with Metadata -- 5. Conclusion -- Contributors.