Spatiotemporal database

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A spatiotemporal database is a database that manages both space and time information. Common examples include:

Contents

Spatiotemporal databases are an extension of spatial databases and temporal databases. A spatiotemporal database embodies spatial, temporal, and spatiotemporal database concepts, and captures spatial and temporal aspects of data and deals with:

Implementations

Although there exist numerous relational databases with spatial extensions, spatiotemporal databases are not based on the relational model for practical reasons, chiefly among them that the data is multi-dimensional, capturing complex structures and behaviours.

As of 2008, there are no RDBMS products with spatiotemporal extensions. There are some products such as the open-source TerraLib which use a middleware approach storing their data in a relational database. Unlike in the pure spatial domain, there are however no official or de facto standards for spatio-temporal data models and their querying. In general, the theory of this area is also less well-developed. [2] Another approach is the constraint database system such as MLPQ (Management of Linear Programming Queries). [3] [4]

GeoMesa is an open-source distributed spatiotemporal index built on top of Bigtable-style databases using an implementation of the Z-order_curve to create a multi-dimensional index combining space and time.

SpaceTime is a commercial spatiotemporal database built on top of the proprietary multidimensional index similar to the kd-tree family, but created using the bottom-up approach and adapted to particular space-time distribution of data. [5] In a study conducted by Ericsson, SpaceTime significantly outperformed GeoMesa. [6]

See also

Related Research Articles

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GeoMesa is an open-source, distributed, spatio-temporal index built on top of Bigtable-style databases using an implementation of the Geohash algorithm.

References

  1. Ralf Hartmut Güting; Markus Schneider (2005). Moving Objects Databases. Academic Press. ISBN   978-0-12-088799-6.
  2. Brent Hall; Michael G. Leahy (2008). Open Source Approaches in Spatial Data Handling. Springer. pp. 126–128. ISBN   978-3-540-74830-4.
  3. Peter Revesz (2010). Introduction to Databases: From Biological to Spatio-Temporal. Springer. p. 262. ISBN   978-1-84996-094-6.
  4. "Instructions for MLPQ system".
  5. "Mireo SpaceTime – an absurdly fast moving objects database".
  6. "Comparing SpaceTime and GeoMesa" (PDF).

Organizations

Implementations