Area access control is defined as the process of mediating requests to enter a physical area through one or more entry points. Area access control database systems are the collections of information required for an access control system to access, query, retrieve and match real time user inputs with persistent data to ensure the integrity of the resources it protects. This thesis presents an object oriented approach to the design and implementation of a centralized area access control database system and focuses on two features, zone management and personnel tracking. Zone management is defined as the process of hierarchically relating a zone to other immediately adjacent zone(s) that a user is required to have prior access to. This feature will automatically generate all zones that a user requires prior access to in order to approach a target zone. To implement zone management, the database system is required to support recursive relationships and recursive querying. The personnel-tracking feature allows the administrator to obtain information such as the movement of persons of interest and their interactions with others in the installation at any particular time. The results of this thesis contribute to the implementation of a sophisticated area access control database system capable of handling multiple installations, and generating the access rules and paths for each new user automatically. In addition, the object oriented area access control database system is able to support unconventional data types such as images and sound which are essential for emerging biometric security systems.