Temporal and Spatial Data

Transaction systems

Relational DB

OO DB

OR DB

Decision Support

OLAP


Data cube

Special indexing structures

Data Mining

Temporal and spatial databases

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Database System Concepts

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Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

Overview

Temporal Data

Spatial and Geographic Databases

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Database System Concepts

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Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

Time In Databases

While most databases tend to model reality at a point in time (at

the ``current'' time), temporal databases model the states of the

real world across time.

Facts in temporal relations have associated times when they are

valid, which can be represented as a union of intervals.

The transaction time for a fact is the time interval during which

the fact is current within the database system.

In a temporal relation, each tuple has an associated time when

it is true; the time may be either valid time or transaction time.

A bi-temporal relation stores both valid and transaction time.

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Time In Databases (Cont.)

Example of a temporal relation:

Temporal query languages have been proposed to simplify modeling of time

as well as time related queries.

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Time Specification in SQL-92

date: four digits for the year (1--9999), two digits for the month

(1--12), and two digits for the date (1--31).

time: two digits for the hour, two digits for the minute, and two

digits for the second, plus optional fractional digits.

timestamp: the fields of date and time, with six fractional digits

for the seconds field.

Times are specified in the Universal Coordinated Time,

abbreviated UTC (from the French); supports time with time

zone.

interval: refers to a period of time (e.g., 2 days and 5 hours),

without specifying a particular time when this period starts; could

more accurately be termed a span.

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Temporal Query Languages

Predicates precedes, overlaps, and contains on time intervals.

Intersect can be applied on two intervals, to give a single

(possibly empty) interval; the union of two intervals may or may

not be a single interval.

A snapshot of a temporal relation at time t consists of the tuples

that are valid at time t, with the time-interval attributes projected

out.

Temporal selection: involves time attributes

Temporal projection: the tuples in the projection inherit their

time-intervals from the tuples in the original relation.

Temporal join: the time-interval of a tuple in the result is the

intersection of the time-intervals of the tuples from which it is

derived. It intersection is empty, tuple is discarded from join.

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Temporal Query Languages (Cont.)

Functional dependencies must be used with care: adding a time

field may invalidate functional dependency

A temporal functional dependency x Y holds on a relation

schema R if, for all legal instances r of R, all snapshots of r
satisfy the functional dependency X Y.

SQL:1999 Part 7 (SQL/Temporal) is a proposed extension to

SQL:1999 to improve support of temporal data.

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Database System Concepts

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Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

Spatial and Geographic Databases

Copyright: Silberschatz, Korth and

Sudarshan

Spatial and Geographic Databases

Spatial databases store information related to spatial

locations, and support efficient storage, indexing and querying

of spatial data.

Special purpose index structures are important for accessing

spatial data, and for processing spatial join queries.

Computer Aided Design (CAD) databases store design

information about how objects are constructed E.g.: designs of

buildings, aircraft, layouts of integrated-circuits

Geographic databases store geographic information (e.g.,

maps): often called geographic information systems or GIS.

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Database System Concepts

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Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

Represented of Geometric Information

Various geometric constructs can be represented in a database in a

normalized fashion.

Represent a line segment by the coordinates of its endpoints.

Approximate a curve by partitioning it into a sequence of segments

Create a list of vertices in order, or

Represent each segment as a separate tuple that also carries with it the
identifier of the curve (2D features such as roads).

Closed polygons

List of vertices in order, starting vertex is the same as the ending vertex, or

Represent boundary edges as separate tuples, with each containing
identifier of the polygon, or

Use triangulation divide polygon into triangles

 Note the polygon identifier with each of its triangles.

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Database System Concepts

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Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

Representation of Geometric Constructs

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Database System Concepts

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Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

Representation of Geometric Information (Cont.)

Representation of points and line segment in 3-D similar to 2-D,

except that points have an extra z component

Represent arbitrary polyhedra by dividing them into tetrahedrons,

like triangulating polygons.

Alternative: List their faces, each of which is a polygon, along with

an indication of which side of the face is inside the polyhedron.

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Design Databases

Represent design components as objects (generally

geometric objects); the connections between the objects

indicate how the design is structured.

Simple two-dimensional objects: points, lines, triangles,

rectangles, polygons.

Complex two-dimensional objects: formed from simple

objects via union, intersection, and difference operations.

Complex three-dimensional objects: formed from simpler

objects such as spheres, cylinders, and cuboids, by union,

intersection, and difference operations.

Wireframe models represent three-dimensional surfaces

as a set of simpler objects.

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Representation of Geometric Constructs

(a) Difference of cylinders

(b) Union of cylinders

Design databases also store non-spatial information about

objects (e.g., construction material, color, etc.)

Spatial integrity constraints are important.

E.g., pipes should not intersect, wires should not be too close to
each other, etc.

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Geographic Data

Raster data consist of bit maps or pixel maps, in two or more

dimensions.

Example 2-D raster image: satellite image of cloud cover, where
each pixel stores the cloud visibility in a particular area.

Additional dimensions might include the temperature at different

altitudes at different regions, or measurements taken at different
points in time.

Design databases generally do not store raster data.

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Database System Concepts

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Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

Geographic Data (Cont.)

Vector data are constructed from basic geometric objects:

points, line segments, triangles, and other polygons in two

dimensions, and cylinders, speheres, cuboids, and other
polyhedrons in three dimensions.

Vector format often used to represent map data.

Roads can be considered as two-dimensional and represented

by lines and curves.

Some features, such as rivers, may be represented either as

complex curves or as complex polygons, depending on whether
their width is relevant.

Features such as regions and lakes can be depicted as

polygons.

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Applications of Geographic Data

Examples of geographic data

map data for vehicle navigation

distribution network information for power, telephones, water
supply, and sewage

Vehicle navigation systems store information about roads

and services for the use of drivers:

Spatial data: e.g, road/restaurant/gas-station coordinates

Non-spatial data: e.g., one-way streets, speed limits, traffic
congestion

Global Positioning System (GPS) unit - utilizes

information broadcast from GPS satellites to find the

current location of user with an accuracy of tens of meters.

increasingly used in vehicle navigation systems as well as
utility maintenance applications.

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Spatial Queries

Nearness queries request objects that lie near a specified

location.

Nearest neighbor queries, given a point or an object, find

the nearest object that satisfies given conditions.

Region queries deal with spatial regions. e.g., ask for

objects that lie partially or fully inside a specified region.

Queries that compute intersections or unions of regions.

Spatial join of two spatial relations with the location playing

the role of join attribute.

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Spatial Queries (Cont.)

Spatial data is typically queried using a graphical query

language; results are also displayed in a graphical manner.

Graphical interface constitutes the front-end

Extensions of SQL with abstract data types, such as lines,

polygons and bit maps, have been proposed to interface

with back-end.

allows relational databases to store and retrieve spatial
information

Queries can use spatial conditions (e.g. contains or overlaps).

queries can mix spatial and nonspatial conditions

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Database System Concepts

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Indexing of Spatial Data

k-d tree - early structure used for indexing in multiple dimensions.

Each level of a k-d tree partitions the space into two.

choose one dimension for partitioning at the root level of the tree.

choose another dimensions for partitioning in nodes at the next level
and so on, cycling through the dimensions.

In each node, approximately half of the points stored in the sub-

tree fall on one side and half on the other.

Partitioning stops when a node has less than a given maximum

number of points.

The k-d-B tree extends the k-d tree to allow multiple child nodes

for each internal node; well-suited for secondary storage.

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Database System Concepts

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Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

Division of Space by a k-d Tree

Each line in the figure (other than the outside box)

corresponds to a node in the k-d tree

the maximum number of points in a leaf node has been set to 1.

The numbering of the lines in the figure indicates the level of

the tree at which the corresponding node appears.

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Database System Concepts

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Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

Division of Space by Quadtrees

Quadtrees

Each node of a quadtree is associated with a rectangular region of space;

the top node is associated with the entire target space.

Each non-leaf nodes divides its region into four equal sized quadrants

correspondingly each such node has four child nodes corresponding to the four
quadrants and so on

Leaf nodes have between zero and some fixed maximum number of points

(set to 1 in example).

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Database System Concepts

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Quadtrees (Cont.)

PR quadtree: stores points; space is divided based on regions,

rather than on the actual set of points stored.

Region quadtrees store array (raster) information.

A node is a leaf node is all the array values in the region that it

covers are the same. Otherwise, it is subdivided further into four

children of equal area, and is therefore an internal node.

Each node corresponds to a sub-array of values.

The sub-arrays corresponding to leaves either contain just a single
array element, or have multiple array elements, all of which have
the same value.

Extensions of k-d trees and PR quadtrees have been proposed

to index line segments and polygons

Require splitting segments/polygons into pieces at partitioning
boundaries


Same segment/polygon may be represented at several leaf

nodes
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Database System Concepts

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Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

R-Trees

R-trees are a N-dimensional extension of B+-trees, useful for

indexing sets of rectangles and other polygons.

Supported in many modern database systems, along with

variants like R+ -trees and R*-trees.

Basic idea: generalize the notion of a one-dimensional

interval associated with each B+ -tree node to an

N-dimensional interval, that is, an N-dimensional rectangle.

Will consider only the two-dimensional case (N = 2)

generalization for N > 2 is straightforward, although R-trees

work well only for relatively small N

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R Trees (Cont.)

A rectangular bounding box is associated with each tree

node.

Bounding box of a leaf node is a minimum sized rectangle that
contains all the rectangles/polygons associated with the leaf node.

The bounding box associated with a non-leaf node contains the

bounding box associated with all its children.

Bounding box of a node serves as its key in its parent node (if any)

Bounding boxes of children of a node are allowed to overlap

A polygon is stored only in one node, and the bounding box of

the node must contain the polygon

The storage efficiency or R-trees is better than that of k-d trees or
quadtrees since a polygon is stored only once

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Example R-Tree

A set of rectangles (solid line) and the bounding boxes (dashed line) of the

nodes of an R-tree for the rectangles. The R-tree is shown on the right.

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Search in R-Trees

To find data items (rectangles/polygons) intersecting
(overlaps) a given query point/region, do the following,
starting from the root node:

If the node is a leaf node, output the data items whose keys
intersect the given query point/region.

Else, for each child of the current node whose bounding box
overlaps the query point/region, recursively search the child

Can be very inefficient in worst case since multiple paths may

need to be searched

but works acceptably in practice.

Simple extensions of search procedure to handle predicates

contained-in and contains

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Database System Concepts

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Insertion in R-Trees

To insert a data item:

Find a leaf to store it, and add it to the leaf



To find leaf, follow a child (if any) whose bounding box contains
bounding box of data item, else child whose overlap with data
item bounding box is maximum

Handle overflows by splits (as in B+ -trees)



Split procedure is different though (see below)

Adjust bounding boxes starting from the leaf upwards

Split procedure:

Goal: divide entries of an overfull node into two sets such that the
bounding boxes have minimum total area


This is a heuristic. Alternatives like minimum overlap are

possible

Finding the best split is expensive, use heuristics instead



See next slide

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Database System Concepts

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Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

Splitting an R-Tree Node

Quadratic split divides the entries in a node into two new nodes

as follows
1. Find pair of entries with maximum separation


that is, the pair such that the bounding box of the two would
has the maximum wasted space (area of bounding box sum
of areas of two entries)

2. Place these entries in two new nodes

3. Repeatedly find the entry with maximum preference for one of the
two new nodes, and assign the entry to that node


Preference of an entry to a node is the increase in area of

bounding box if the entry is added to the other node

4. Stop when half the entries have been added to one node


Then assign remaining entries to the other node

Cheaper linear split heuristic works in time linear in number of

entries,

Cheaper but generates slightly worse splits.
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Deleting in R-Trees

Deletion of an entry in an R-tree done much like a B+-tree

deletion.

In case of underfull node, borrow entries from a sibling if possible,
else merging sibling nodes

Alternative approach removes all entries from the underfull node,

deletes the node, then reinserts all entries

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