Managing and Mining Multimedia Databases

Rating:
Summary: Shallow Book Without Real Content
Review: This book according to its jacket is written for technical managers, ..., and technologists. As a technologist familiar with conventional database management, I purchased this book to be informed about broad principles and issues with respect to multimedia. The book does not cover multimedia database technology in any depth, rather relying on a shallow descriptions and hand waving as the means of managing these data. For example in the section about multimedia metadata, the metadata described for text, audio, image and video are identical, except that the author seems to have done a global replace with the appropriate word. This approach is seen in several other parts of the book including the section on data mining. Even the bibliography is wanting, you would be better served accessing online repositories such as citeseer. A VERY disappointing book from a known researcher in database systems.

Rating:
Summary: High level but useful book
Review: This book is now 3+ years old and therefore is a buit outdated. Nevertheless it gives a very good description of the issues and challanges for managing multimedia databases. The part on multimedia data mining is less detailed. This could be due to the fact that 3 years ago not much was reported on multimedia data mining. It is perhaps time to write the next edition. Nevertheless I would recommend this book to someone who wants a quick overview of the field.

Rating:
Summary: Very good book
Review: This is a very good book for someone who wants to learn about managing multimedia databases as well as multimedia data mining. The multimedia database management part was excellent. I would have liked to have seen more about multimedia data mining. Nevertheless it provides a high level view of the subject. The book also discusses some of the issues relating to e-commerce and e-business. Topics such as security and knowledge management were covered well. While the book addresses many topics, its very readable.

Rating:
Summary: Good reading
Review: This is the fourth in a series of book the author has written on data management and data mining. While I rated the earlier book on data management as excellent, this book does not bring out the details unique to multimedia data mining. However the multimedia data management part of the book was very interesting. The part on multimedia data mining was somewhat premature as many of the developments have reuslted during the past two years or so.