Abstract

The data model upon which most of today's commercial database management systems are based has shown to be insufficient for geographic information systems (GISs). The recently promoted object-oriented model provides some useful tools for data abstraction and data structuring, which augment the conventional tools and overcomes some deficiencies inherent to the traditional relational model. In particular, the concepts of complex objects with pertinent operations are more powerful modeling methods than the currently popular structure of relational tables and relational algebra. This survey article presents the concepts of object-oriented modeling applied to geographic data and demonstrates their impact on future GISs.

Citations