Without getting into the details and complexities of specific commercial products, this book introduces database management techniques that go beyond today's relational database management systems - for instance, distributed, textual, multi-media and object-oriented. It covers distributed database management systems, the risks associated with them, and alternative solutions to the major pitfalls and technical problems; considers three types of textual based systems information retrieval, hoovering and filtering - and describes various approaches to distributed textual database management systems; explores DBMSs that manage a variety of new media types, and the special problems introduced by multimedia; and describes the basic principles of object-oriented data and the types of DBMS that manage them.