Z39.50 is a standard protocol approved by ANSI for standardization of client/server based information retrieval services. In the Z39.50 standard, once a client connects to a server, it can request a variety of services until the connection is closed.
In this thesis, we design and implement a Z39.50 server for the ODYSSEUS object-oriented multimedia database management system. Our Z39.50 server has the followings characteristics (1) By utilizing the ODYSSEUS DBMS, which is tightly coupled with information retrieval capability, it can efficiently support queries that integrate attribute-based and text-based retrievals. (2) Based on a multi-threading architecture, it can create fast entities that service the client's requests compared with multi-processing based servers. It also utilizes main memory more efficiently. (3) It avoids inconsistencies arising between the database and the term-list containing the keywords used in a search. Finally (4) Supporting the complete set of facilities defined in the Z39.50 it increases the efficiency and user-friendliness of the search.
