Visualisation and editing of 3D objects organised in a DBMS
Jantien Stoter, Sisi Zlatanova · Research Repository (Delft University of Technology) · 2003
The developments in DBMSs are quite significant in the last several years. Mainstream DBMSs (Oracle, IBM DB2, Informix, Ingres) have already implemented spatial data types and spatial operators similar to the OpenGIS Consortium Simple Features Specification for SQL. The implementation consists of an SQL extension that supports storage, retrieval, query and update of simple spatial features (points, lines and polygons). Currently the implementations are only 2D, i.e. point, line and polygon are supported. However, in most DBMSs 3D coordinates can be used to represent 2D features in 3D (3D points, 3D lines and 3D polygons). Specifications for complex features (topology) as well as for 3D geometry objects are currently being developed by the OpenGIS Consortium in co-operation with ISO. Furthermore many frond-end applications (CAD, GIS) offer tools to access, to edit and to post data to the DBMS. The greatest benefits of such DBMS-GIS/CAD integration are in the area of visualisation and data editing. Having 3D data stored in a DBMS, the user has the possibility to extract only a limited set of data and thus critically reduce the time for loading. Locating, editing and examining a particular object also becomes quick, simple and convenient. This paper summarises our experiments on storage and visualisation of 3D data, using the current tools