Topology in spatial DBMSs

Nowadays, GISs are changing to an integrated architecture in which spatial and attribute data are maintained in one DataBase Management System. Mainstream DBMSs have implemented spatial data types, spatial functions and spatial indexes. The spatial data types are implemented using a geometrical model, consequently the relationships between neighbouring spatial objects cannot be stored and can only be queried with a geometrical query. In our research we implemented topology in the DBMS in two ways. We also studied the possibilities of Laser-Scan’s Radius Topology: recently released software in which a topological model has been implemented on top of Oracle Spatial. In this paper we describe our solution for topology in DBMSs and our experiments with Radius Topology. We end with a discussion on the advantages and disadvantages of the three approaches. Section