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Encyclopedia of Database Systems pp 3583–3587Cite as

Spatial Data Types

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Synonyms

Geometric data types

Definition

Data types are a well known concept in computer science (for example, in programming languages or in database systems). A data type defines a set of homogeneous values and the allowable operations on those values. An example is a type integer representing the set of 32-bit integers and including operations such as addition, subtraction, and multiplication that can be performed on integers. Spatial data types or geometric data types provide a fundamental abstraction for modeling the geometric structure of objects in space as well as their relationships, properties, and operations. They are of particular interest in spatial databases [4, 8, 12] and Geographical Information Systems [4]. One speaks of spatial objects as values of spatial data types. Examples are two-dimensional data types for points (for example, representing the locations of lighthouses in the U.S.), lines (for example, describing the ramifications of the Nile Delta), regions(for...

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Recommended Reading

  1. Clementini E, Di Felice P. A model for representing topological relationships between complex geometric features in spatial databases. Inf Sci. 1996;90(1–4):121–36.

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  5. Güting RH, Schneider M. Realm-based spatial data types: the ROSE algebra. VLDB J. 1995;4(2):243–286.

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  10. Schneider M, Weinrich B An abstract model of three-dimensional spatial data types. In: Proceedings of the 12th ACM International Symposium on Geographic Information Systems; 2004. p. 67–72.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

    Markus Schneider

Authors
  1. Markus Schneider
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Correspondence to Markus Schneider .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Ling Liu

  2. University of Waterloo School of Computer Science, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. Tamer Özsu

Section Editor information

  1. Computer Science, University of Hagen, Hagen, Germany

    Ralf Hartmut Güting

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Schneider, M. (2018). Spatial Data Types. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8265-9_354

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