XZ-Ordering: A Space-Filling Curve for Objects with Spatial Extension

There is an increasing need to integrate spatial index structures into commercial database management systems. In geographic information systems (GIS), huge amounts of information involving both, spatial and thematic attributes, have to be managed. Whereas relational databases are adequate for handling thematic attributes, they fail to manage spatial information efficiently. In this paper, we point out that neither a hybrid solution using relational databases and a separate spatial index nor the approach of existing object-relational database systems provide a satisfying solution to this problem. Therefore, it is necessary to map the spatial information into the relational model. Promising approaches to this mapping are based on space-filling curves such as Z-ordering or the Hilbert curve. These approaches perform an embedding of the multidimensional space into the one-dimensional space. Unfortunately, the techniques are very sensitive to the suitable choice of an underlying resolution...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1999
• Where: SSD
• Authors: Christian Böhm, Gerald Klump, Hans-Peter Kriegel
• Keywords: Database, Spatial, Spatial Index, Spatial Information, SSD 1999