Animating Spatiotemporal Constraint Databases

Constraint databases provide a very expressive framework for spatiotemporal database applications. However, animating such databases is diicult because of the cost of constructing a graphical representation of a single snapshot of a constraint database. We present a novel approach that makes the eecient animation of constraint databases possible. The approach is based on a new construct: parametric polygon. We present an algorithm to construct the set of parametric polygons that represent a given linear constraint database. We also show how to animate objects deened by parametric polygons, analyze the computational complexity of animation, and present empirical data to demonstrate the eeciency of our approach.