Application of DBMS to Land Information Systems

Land Information Systems shall be used to store data on objects in space (e. g. buildings, roads, electricity networks etc.). Interactive retrieval is mainly done in order to get a map drawn on a CRT screen; the typical query is therefore a two-dimensional range query which yields all the data needed to draw the map. A method to implement such a LIS based on a commercially available DMBS (e. g. DMBS-10 from DEC) is shown and some practical results are reported. The method used relies heavily on control of physical placement of stored records and clustering of data according to neighbourhood.