[ G-Brackets : un nouveau formalisme pour la représentation et l'interrogation des bases de données SIG ]
Volume 10, Issue 1, January 2015, Pages 336–350
Noureddine Chenfour1 and Hicham Amakdouf2
1 ACT Research Team, Computer Science Department, Faculty of Sciences Dhar El Mahraz, Sidi Mohammed ben Abdellah University, Fez, Morocco
2 ACT Research Team, Computer Science Department, Faculty of Sciences Dhar El Mahraz, Sidi Mohammed ben Abdellah University, Fez, Morocco
Original language: French
Copyright © 2015 ISSR Journals. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
In this paper, we outline the bridges that connect the area of GIS knowledge representation and its querying languages. Our work is in fact grounded in a research framework which we had founded to hang out with a pretty appropriate GIS query language that is adapted enough to this kind of information systems having a very particular aspects. Such aspects are unfortunately not yet fully exploited by the existing solutions.
In our study, we were led to consider the existing systems and standards for the representation of GIS information, and we quote in this case GML and ESRI. We have reached at the end of this study to the conviction that it is impossible to build a query language dealing with our basic aim if we ignore the representation of the GIS database to query.
Convinced of the robustness of the XML representation, but aware of his extremely verbose and difficult to read character, we had then to take inspiration from XML technology while correcting this verbosity problem and the underlying complexity.
We present then in this paper a new formalism that is able to interest, engage and influence the business of geographic information. Our formalism "G-Brackets" has to respond strongly to our initial aims which can be summarized in the following goals:
- A solid and hierarchical formalism with the Manner of XML technology.
- An object oriented representation.
- A knowledge based representation according to first-order predicates logic, ready to be requested by an inference engine able to go beyond an ordinary SQL engine.
- In the end, a simple and less verbose symbolism that is readable and able to separate between the data model and its semantics. Such pattern has constituted for us a real extension of the MVC design pattern that we named MVX pattern.
Author Keywords: GIS, GML, XML, Spatial Databases, Query Language.
Volume 10, Issue 1, January 2015, Pages 336–350
Noureddine Chenfour1 and Hicham Amakdouf2
1 ACT Research Team, Computer Science Department, Faculty of Sciences Dhar El Mahraz, Sidi Mohammed ben Abdellah University, Fez, Morocco
2 ACT Research Team, Computer Science Department, Faculty of Sciences Dhar El Mahraz, Sidi Mohammed ben Abdellah University, Fez, Morocco
Original language: French
Copyright © 2015 ISSR Journals. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
In this paper, we outline the bridges that connect the area of GIS knowledge representation and its querying languages. Our work is in fact grounded in a research framework which we had founded to hang out with a pretty appropriate GIS query language that is adapted enough to this kind of information systems having a very particular aspects. Such aspects are unfortunately not yet fully exploited by the existing solutions.
In our study, we were led to consider the existing systems and standards for the representation of GIS information, and we quote in this case GML and ESRI. We have reached at the end of this study to the conviction that it is impossible to build a query language dealing with our basic aim if we ignore the representation of the GIS database to query.
Convinced of the robustness of the XML representation, but aware of his extremely verbose and difficult to read character, we had then to take inspiration from XML technology while correcting this verbosity problem and the underlying complexity.
We present then in this paper a new formalism that is able to interest, engage and influence the business of geographic information. Our formalism "G-Brackets" has to respond strongly to our initial aims which can be summarized in the following goals:
- A solid and hierarchical formalism with the Manner of XML technology.
- An object oriented representation.
- A knowledge based representation according to first-order predicates logic, ready to be requested by an inference engine able to go beyond an ordinary SQL engine.
- In the end, a simple and less verbose symbolism that is readable and able to separate between the data model and its semantics. Such pattern has constituted for us a real extension of the MVC design pattern that we named MVX pattern.
Author Keywords: GIS, GML, XML, Spatial Databases, Query Language.
Abstract: (french)
Dans cet article, nous esquissons les ponts qui rapprochent le domaine de la représentation de la connaissance SIG et celui de son interrogation. Le travail se situe en fait dans un cadre de recherche que nous avions tracé pour sortir avec un langage d'interrogation SIG assez approprié pour ce genre de systèmes d'information ayant une spécificité très particulière. Une telle spécificité n'est malheureusement pas encore pleinement exploitée par les solutions existantes.
Au cours de notre étude, nous avions été amené à se pencher sur les systèmes et les standards existants permettant la représentation des informations SIG, et nous citons en l'occurrence GML et ESRI. Nous avons abouti au terme de cette étude à la conviction qu'il est impossible de sortir avec un langage d'interrogation approchant notre objectif de base si nous faisons abstraction de la représentation de la base de données SIG à interroger.
Convaincu de la robustesse de la représentation XML, mais conscient de son caractère extrêmement verbeux et difficilement lisible, nous devions alors nous inspirer de la technologie XML tout en corrigeant ce problème de verbosité et la complexité sous-jacente.
Nous présentons alors dans cet article un formalisme susceptible d'intéresser, voire d'impliquer et influencer les métiers de l'information géographique. Notre formalisme « G-Brackets » a permis de répondre très fortement à nos objectifs initiaux que nous pouvons résumer dans les points suivants :
- Un formalisme solide et hiérarchique à la manière de la technologie XML.
- Une représentation orientée objet.
- Une représentation basée sur les connaissances et la logique des prédicats de premier ordre, s'apprêtant à être interrogée par un moteur d'inférence capable d'aller au-delà d'un moteur SQL ordinaire].
- En fin un symbolisme simple, moins verbeux, lisible et séparant modèle et sémantique des données ; ce qui constituera pour nous une véritable extension du design pattern MVC et que nous avons nommé MVX.
Author Keywords: SIG, GML, XML, bases de données spatiales, langage de requête.
How to Cite this Article
Noureddine Chenfour and Hicham Amakdouf, “G-Brackets : A New Formalism for Encoding and Querying GIS Databases,” International Journal of Innovation and Applied Studies, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 336–350, January 2015.
