Future object managers will utilise existing relational database systems as
primitive building blocks replacing today's file systems. SQL, similar to
assembler language today, will be used to implement higher-order object 
managers.  Current middleware layers will be extended to a coordination layer 
that uses and controls different database systems used as storage systems and 
as index managers. We substantiate this claim by presenting two middleware 
prototype systems as first steps into this visionary direction. One provides a 
generic object data model layer to the clients. It is mapped to a relational
multiprocessor database system. The other is a textual document object manager
that is implemented using a TP-monitor together with a relational 
multi-processor system for storage management. A key aspect in both prototypes 
is high-level parallelism for high performance in terms of response times
and throughput. We achieve this by a synthesis of research results in the area 
of multi-level transactions with existing transaction processing technology in 
relational database systems. This synthesis allows to transform 
intra-transaction parallelism to inter-transaction parallelism with the 
advantage of the latter being well supported by today's database systems. 
Practical evaluations show significant improvements compared to conventional 
solutions.