Spatial Data

Spatial databases store information related to spatial locations, and support efficient storage, indexing, and querying of said data.

Geographic Data

• Road maps, land-usage maps, topographic maps, etc. come under this category. Geographic information systems are special-purpose databases made to store this data.

Geometric Data

• Stores information about how objects are constructe. A point is identified by its co-ordinates, a line by n co-ordinates, and so on.

Design Data

Like geometric data, design data also stores information about something geometric. It may also store other data, like how two objects interact with each other (union / intersection).

Raster Data

Raster data contains bitamps of n dimensions. These are typically not stored in design databases.

Vector Data

Vector data is constructed from basic geometrical objects, like points, line segments, polygons, polyhedra, etc. These are typically used to store designs.

Spatial Queries

Spatial queries can ask questions about * Nearest objects * Nearest neighbours satisfying a condition * Graph-related algorithms * Spatial Joins * Questions, such as if region A contains region B