Geocoding Data Analysis and Processing in Relational Databases

摘要

Geocoding data are widely used in applications to support geographical locations and compute spatial relationships, such as distances. It is a common practice to capture geospatial data in relational database management systems (RDBMS), where most business data are stored and processed. However, RDBMS’s lack of ability in geocoding analysis and processing has prevented applications from handling spatial data effectively. Relational databases need to support geocoding data analysis and processing, such as geocoding data sorting, searching, geo-positioning, and distance computing. More advanced requirements may include the analysis of an area based on geo-location and area coverage of a geo-location. This paper provides analysis of some of the requirements on geocoding data processing in RDBMS from business application perspectives. The challenges in design and implementation will be discussed. The requirements will be further transformed to modeling, analysis, and processing on geocoding support in relational databases. When database volume increases, performance issues need to be addressed in order to provide efficient data queries and data processing. Database objects, such as auxiliary tables, views, and indexes, can be designed to provide performance improvement.