Abstract
This paper presents the definition and manipulation language GISQL for Geographical Information Systems together with its interpreter. The main characteristic of the GISQL query language is to provide the user with an homogeneous interface for querying both spatial and alphanumeric information. The homogeneous interface consists of an extended version of the well-known SQL query language. Although the information is actually stored in two different databases, the user is presented with the view of a single virtual relational database, and the GISQL interpreter is in charge of managing the actual connections to the two phisical databases. Then, a GISQL query can contain any combination of spatial and alphanumeric conditions in a single command. In order to provide the user with the view of a unique relational database, the GISQL interface makes use of the concept of virtual tables. A virtual table contains both columns to hold the values of alphanumeric attributes and columns to hold the values of graphical attributes. The alphanumeric values are directly extract from the SQL database while the graphical values are derived from the graphical database.
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Egenhofer, M.A. (1994), SPATIAL SQL: A Query and Presentation Language, IEEE Trans. on Knowledge and Data Engineering, 6, 1, 86–95.
Egenhofer, M.A. (1992), Why not SQL!, Int. Journ. Geographical Information Systems, 6, 2, 71–85.
Egenhofer, M.A., Frank, A. (1988), Towards a Spatial Query Language: User Interface Consideration, in Proceedings of 14th International Conference on Very Large Databases, Los Angeles, 124–133.
Herring, J. (1987), TIGRIS: Topologically Integrated Geographic Information Systems, in Proc. AUTO-CARTO 8, Baltimore, 282–291.
Ingram, K., Phillips, W. (1987), Geographic Information Processing Using a SQL-based Query Language, in Proc. AUTO-CARTO 8, Baltimore, 326–335.
ISO/IEC JTC1/SC21/WG3 DBL-SEL3b (1990) Database Language SQL2, also including SQL3 extensions ISO working draft..
Kim, W. (1992), On Optimizing an SQL-like Nested Query, ACM Transactions on Database Systems, 7, 3, 443–469.
Ooi, B.C., Sacks-Davis, R., McDonnell, K. (1989), Extending a DBMS for Geographic Applications, Proceedings IEE 5th Conference on Data Engineering, Los Angeles, 590–597.
Aho, A.V., Sethi, R. and Ullman, J.D. (1985), Compilers,principles, techniques and tools,Addison Wesley.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1995 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Costagliola, G., Tortora, G., Tucci, M., Busillo, M. (1995). GISQL — A Query Language Intepreter for Geographical Information Systems. In: Spaccapietra, S., Jain, R. (eds) Visual Database Systems 3. VDB 1995. IFIP — The International Federation for Information Processing. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-34905-3_17
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-34905-3_17
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4757-6937-1
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-34905-3
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive