Temporal Objects for Spatio-Temporal Data Models and a Comparison of Their Representations

Abstract: Currently, there are strong efforts to integrate spatial and temporal database technology into spatio-temporal database systems. This paper views the topic from a rather fundamental perspective and makes several contributions. First, it reviews existing temporal and spatial data models and presents a completely new approach to temporal data modeling based on the very general notion of temporal object. The definition of temporal objects is centered around the observation that anything that changes over time can be expressed as a function over time. For the modeling of spatial objects the well known concept of spatial data types is employed. As specific subclasses, linear temporal and spatial objects are identified. Second, the paper proe database embedding of temporal objects by means of the abstract data type (ADT) approach to the integration of complex objects into databases. Furthermore, we make statements about the expressiveness of different temporal and spatial database ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1998
• Where: ER
• Authors: Martin Erwig, Markus Schneider, Ralf Hartmut Güting
• Keywords: Database, ER 1998, Spatial, Spatial Objects, Temporal Objects