Course: Spatial Databases (SDBMS)

Contacts:

• Teacher Professor Andrea Rodríguez (Content)
• Francisco Godoy (Technical Issues)

Goal:

During this course you will understand the main components of a spatial database system. We will cover topics of database design starting from conceptual modeling to physical data modeling. The main differences of spatial databases with respect to traditional databases will be highlighted along the topics

Style:

• Active knowledge acquisition
• Theory and case study
• Asynchronous part: self study based on online material and text book, self-tests at the end of each unit, individual assignments
• Synchronous part: discussion of problems and tasks in 3 synchronous sessions
• Access to teacher and tutors via E-Mail
• Students' interaction via forum
• One exam at the end of the course
• Student workload: 60 h (2x30 h), equivalent to 2 credit points

Participants:

• Students at INPE (Brazil), ISEGI (Portugal), IfGI (Münster)
• Knowledge about data structures and traditional databases is recommended

Organization:

• Start and end: March ? - April ?, 2006
• Synchronous sessions:
• March ?
• March ?
• March ?
• Max. number of participants: 20
• Student online activity will be tracked by the platform, completion of selftests and online questions will be used to assess the progress of the course

"Introduction"

• Data Domain
• Main Characteristics of Spatial Databases
• Additional Requirements
• Abstraction Levels
• Geo-Information Requirements
• Spatial Database Users
• SDBMS and GIS
• Evolution of SDBMS
• Information Technology
• Three-Level Architecture
• Taxonomy of space
• Spatial Models: Entities
• Spatial Models: Surface

"Spatial Data Models"

• Introduction to Spatial Data Model
• A Generic Spatial Data Model
• Spatial versus Classical Data Models
• Characteristics of Spatial Data Models
• Polynomial or constraints model
• Tessellations
• Peano
• Vector Model
• Topological Model
• Spatial Relations

"Conceptual Modeling"

• Database Design: Three Steps
• Modeling Process
• Conceptual Model: Entity-Relation
• Extended-ER
• UML:Unified Modeling Language
• ER versus UML
• OMT-G: Classes
• OMT-G: Associations
• OMT-G: Integrity constrainst

"Data Modeling/ Query languages"

• Topics in Relational Model
• From ER to Relational Model
• Relational Model
• Extending Relational Models
• Data Model: OR-DBMS
• Query Language
• Study Case : data Model
• SQL : Standard Query Language
• Extending SQL
• OGIS Spatial Data Model
• SQL/OGIS

"Physical Model"

• Physical Data Model
• Data Structures and Algorithms
• Physical Data Model for SDBMs
• Data Structures and Algorithms
• Spatial Physical Model: Assumptions
• Common Queries
• Files Structures
• Heap
• Hash
• Spatial Structures: Filling curves
• What is an index?
• Indexing Methods
• Space: Grid Files
• Space: Quadtree
• Object: Rtree

"Optimization"

• Need for optimization
• Spatial Operations
• Spatial Operations: Spatial Join
• Spatial Operations: Map Overlay
• Techniques of Query Processing
• Query Processing: Nearest Neighbor
• Query Processing: Spatial Join
• JOIN Algorithms
• JOIN Algorithms: Tree Matching
• Optimization
• Schema of Query Optimizer
• Query Optimizer
• Query Tree
• Query Optimizer
• Transformations
• Reminders: Relation Algebra Operators
• Equivalence Rules
• Query Optimizer
• Execution Plan

Required Book:

Shekar, S. and Crawla, S. (2003). Spatial Databases: A Tour. Prentice Hall

Recommended Book:

Rigaux, P., Scholl, M., Voisard, A. (2001). Spatial Applications - with Application to GIS, Morgan Kaufmann