EMMA - towards a query algebra for enhanced multimedia meta objects

For efficient access to multimedia content the media data has to be enriched with additional information about the content´s semantic description and functionality, e.g. style sheets for rendering. Current approaches for semantic modeling of multimedia content store the information about the content´s semantics and functionality in different files and at different locations, which makes the retrieval and reuse of multimedia content very difficult. We have proposed enhanced multimedia meta objects (EMMOs) as a new means for semantic multimedia modeling that indivisibly combines multimedia content with its description and functionality. In this paper, we give an overview of the structure of EMMA, a query algebra, which is adequate and complete with regard to the EMMO model, enables query optimization, allows the integration of ontology knowledge, and supports distributive collaborative authoring.