On Data Warehouse and GIS Integration

A system composed of a data warehouse (DWH) integrated with geographical information system (GIS) yields significant advantages and introduces a new decision making support quality. The advantages, drawbacks and implementation strategies of the integrated system are discussed. This paper attempts to identify necessary requirements for functionality of the integration module in order to provide complete and consistent system interconnection. The solution should be general enough to be easily reimplemented for a large family of GIS and DWH. Within the project, special attention should be dedicated to the methodology of spatial data aggregation. It is necessary to keep in mind that two different types of information can be used to describe spatial data, namely geometric properties (location, area etc.) and topological ones. A software component, which interconnects these two technologies, is under development within the GOAL research project.