A specification of a spatial query language over GML

OGC (OpenGIS Consortium) is contributing with a XML specification to the representation of geographic information (called GML 2.0 - Geographical Markup Language) [13]. GML allows the exchange of geographic information in the Web. The models based on XML benefit the interoperability, and thus GML allows the exchange of geographic information on the Web. However, there is another important advantage to the models based on XML (GML, ARCHEOGIS [4]): it may be queried.In this paper, a query language GML is shown. The data model and the algebra underlying the query language are an extension of [2] to support spatial features. The query language has a familiar select-from-where syntax and is based on SQL (Structured Query Language). It includes a set of spatial operators (disjoint, touches, etc.), and includes traditional operators (=,>, <,...) for non-spatial information.