Knowledge-Based Approach for an Object-Oriented Spatial Database System

In this paper, we present a knowledge-based object-oriented spatial database system called KOBOS. A knowledge-based approach is introduced to the object-oriented spatial database system for data modeling and approximate query answering. For handling the structure of spatial objects and the approximate spatial operators, we propose three levels of object-oriented data model: (1) a spatial shape model; (2) a spatial object model; (3) an internal description model. We use spatial type abstraction hierarchies(STAHs) to provide the range of the approximate spatial operators. We then propose SOQL, a spatial object-oriented query language. SOQL provides an integrated mechanism for the graphical display of spatial objects and the retrieval of spatial and aspatial objects. To support an efficient hybrid query evaluation, we use the top-down spatial query processing method.