The Object Data Management Group (ODMG) was conceived in the summer of 1991 at a breakfast with object database vendors that was organized by Rick Cattell of Sun Microsystems. In 1998, the ODMG changed its name from the Object Database Management Group to reflect the expansion of its efforts to include specifications for both object database and object-relational mapping products.

The primary goal of the ODMG was to put forward a set of specifications that allowed a developer to write portable applications for object database and object-relational mapping products. In order to do that, the data schema, programming language bindings, and data manipulation and query languages needed to be portable.

Between 1993 and 2001, the ODMG published five revisions to its specification. The last revision was ODMG version 3.0, after which the group disbanded.