Extending Relational DBMS for Spatiotemporal Information
Xiaomei Xu · Summit (Simon Fraser University) · 1990
A spatiotemporal database is a spatial database in which data objects may change their spatial locations and/or shapes with time.We consider three components, theme, location, and time, in the design.Based on previous studies of spatial and temporal databases, this thesis extends the relational data model to an extended relational model with the flavor of object-oriented databases in order to represent complex data objects with spatiotemporal information.A spatiotemporal query language, STSQL, is developed as an extension of the relational database language SQL.Moreover, an efficient spatiotemporal data storage structure and two indexing mechanisms are developed to facilitate the search of spatial data objects changing with time in the specified spatial framework.Sample queries from geographical applications are supplied to demonstrate the power and usefulness of the approach.I owe a great debt of gratitude to Dr. Jiawei Han