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Encyclopedia of Database Systems pp 4173–4182Cite as

Topological Data Models

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Synonyms

Topology; Topological data structure; Topological fabric

Definition

Topology is defined as a mathematical model used to define the location of and relationships between geographical phenomena. These topological relationships are independent of distance or direction. Topology may depict connectivity of one entity to another; for example, an edge will have topological relationships to it’s from and to nodes.

Topology is useful with spatial data because many spatial modeling or geoprocessing operations do not require geometric coordinate values. For example, to find the shortest path between two nodes requires a list of which edges connect to each other and the cost of traversing along each edge. Geometric coordinates are only necessary to draw the shortest path after it is calculated.

More generally, topology, in the context of spatial data, can have several other meanings:

  • A mathematical model of features in space (e.g., nodes, edges, and faces).

  • A physical data model for...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Environmental Systems Research Institute, Redlands, CA, USA

    Erik Hoel

Authors
  1. Erik Hoel
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Erik Hoel .

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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Hoel, E. (2018). Topological Data Models. 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_431

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