19. The computer program product according to claim 14 wherein an object in the object database has an associated metadata object used by the object database to manage to the database.
14. A computer program product comprising computer readable recording medium having computer readable code stored thereon for managing an object database for objects, said computer readable code which when loaded onto a computer system and executed performs the following steps: receiving a database path query expression comprising a main query expression and a treat-as query expression; translating the database path query into an object query; and querying the object database using the object query wherein the translating comprises: breaking the path query into nodes; examining each node to identify objects for selection and objects from which selection is made; consolidating objects for selection from each node in the sub-query into a sub-SELECT clause; consolidating objects for selection in each node of the main query into a SELECT clause; consolidating objects from which selection is made from nodes in the sub-query into a sub-FROM clause; consolidating objects from which selection is made from nodes in the main query into a FORM clause; and forming the object query from the SELECT clause; from the FROM clause; and from a WHERE clause wherein the WHERE clause consists of the sub-SELECT clause and the sub-FROM clause and a sub-WHERE clause that links the scope of the sub-SELECT clause to the scope of the SELECT clause.