Efficient multi-dimensional data handling in constraint databases.
Stéphane Grumbach, Luc Segoufin, Philippe Rigaux · 1998
Most spatial information systems are limited to a fixed dimension (generally 2) which is not extensible. On the other hand, the emerging paradigm of constraint databases allows the representation of data of arbitrary dimension. The complexity of evaluating queries though might be costly if the dimension of the objects is really arbitrary. In order to preserve a low complexity for query evaluation, we introduce the structural dimension of an object O, as the dimension of the components O 1 ; :::; On , such that O = O 1 \\Theta \\Delta \\Delta \\Delta \\Theta On . This allows to process queries independently on each component, therefore achieving a satisfying trade-off between design simplicity, expressive power of the query language and efficiency of query evaluation. This data model has been implemented in the dedale system. We illustrate its practical interest in the context of spatio-temporal databases where space and time are the natural components. Keywords : Constraints Databases, Sp...