Book excerpt: Nowadays, newly developed software is often already obsolete by the time it is introduced. The object-oriented concept provides a solution to this "crisis," by allowing objects to be used in a wide range of programs. Object-oriented applications development with databases places special demands on the DBMS and the development environment. This book provides a detailed description of the object model of the Cach post-relational database. In addition, the reader is guided step-by-step through the development of a post-relational application. The accompanying CD-ROM contains the associated Windows software.