Methodical Spatial Database Design with Topological Polygon Structures

Spatial databases form the foundation for a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI). For this, a spatial database should be methodically developed to accommodate its role in SDI. It is desirable to have an approach to spatial database development that considers maintenance from the early stage of database design and in a flexible way. Moreover, there is a lack of a mechanism to capture topological relations of spatial objects during the design process. This paper presents an approach that integrates maintenance of topological integrity constraints into the whole spatial database development cycle. The approach is based on the concept of Abstract Data Types. A number of topological classes have been identified and modelling primitives developed for them. Topological integrity constraints are embedded into maintenance functions associated with the topological classes. A semi-automatic transformation process has been developed following the principles of Model Driven Architecture to simplify the design process.