Using Temporal Versioning and Integrity Constraints for Updating Geographic Databases and Maintaining Their Consistency

Abstract

The use of geographic data has become a widespread concern, mainly within applications related to spatial planning and spatial decision-making. Therefore, changing environments require databases adaptable to changes that occur over time. Thus, supporting geographic information evolution is essential and extremely important within changing environments. The evolution is expressed in the geographic database by series of update operations that should maintain its consistency. This paper proposes an approach for updating geographic databases, based on update operators and algorithms of constraints integrity checking. Temporal versioning is used to keep the track of changes. Every version presents the state of the geographic database at a given time. Algorithms of constraints integrity checking allow maintaining the database consistency upon its update. To implement our approach and assist users in the evolution process, the GeoVersioning tool is developed and tested on a sample geographic database.