Fall 2006 Database Seminar

Wednesday September 20th, 2006
CSE Room 305
12:00 - 1:00 PM

Overview of Map Algebra

Mark McKenney

Maps are a fundamental spatial concept capable of representing and storing large amounts of information in a visual form. Although maps are an intuitive basis for geometric applications such as spatial DBMSs and GIS, these applications do not incorporate maps as a fundamental data type. Instead geometric data types such as regions are compiled together to form map representations.. Thus, maps are not considered "first class citizens" in spatial software systems, but are mainly for visualization. Operations over maps represented as collections of regions are difficult to define and implement because each individual region has no knowledge of structural information inherent in maps.. Thus, the notion of a map algebra, in which maps are considered fundamental data types, has gained popularity in spatially oriented fields.. In this talk, I provide an overview of "map algebra", a formal data model aimed at supporting map data.

 


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