Digital production assets and their attributes are stored directly in a scene description database, without any association with a specific enclosing asset data file. Software applications perform database queries to retrieve assets and attributes from the database. Changes to assets or new assets are stored in the database. Query results may be cached to improve performance. Heterogeneous opinion sets including sparse opinions of attribute values may be used to specify scene description data. The database stores heterogeneous opinion set data in association with attribute values. Database-aware applications may change the scene description data in the database without loading, parsing, and instantiating scene description data. An application generates database queries and instantiates scene description data from query results for access and manipulation by other applications.