The new nCUBE2-based parallel Oracle system (currently version 7.0) is installed at NPAC within the joint JPL/NPAC database project sponsored by ASAS. The MIMD Oracle model is based on a mesh of SQL interpreters and hence it follows an organization similar to the MIMD MOVIE model. We plan to develop the ``server parallel'' coupling between Oracle and MOVIE systems, for example, by locating them on parallel subcubes and linking, via the common hypercube channel. This would allow for smooth integration of high-performance database with high-performance computing and also for extending the restricted parallelism of the current MIMD Oracle model by the Fortran90-style data-parallel support for processing large distributed tables.
We also plan to experiment with object-oriented [Zdonik:90a] and intelligent [Parsaye:89a] database models in MOVIE and to develop MovieScript tools for integrating heterogeneous distributed database systems. MovieScript offers adequate language tools to address these modern database issues and to develop a bridge between relational and object-oriented techniques. For example, a table in the relational database can be represented in terms of MovieScript objects (fields of records) and then extended towards more versatile abstract data structures by using the inheritance mechanism.