TerraHS: Integration of Functional Programming and Spatial Databases for GIS Application Development

摘要

Recently, researchers in GIScience argued about the benefits on using functional programming for geospatial application development and prototyping of novel ideas. This paper presents an application that interfaces a functional language with a spatial database. It enables developing GIS applications development in a functional language, while handling data are in a spatial database. We used this application develop a Map Algebra, that shows the benefits on using this paradigm in GIScience. Our work shows there are many gains in using a functional language, especially Haskell, to write concise and expressive GIS applications. The TerraHS application allows a good compromise between the expressive power of a functional language, and the data handling facilities of an imperative language.