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Spatial Indexing Techniques

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Encyclopedia of Database Systems

Synonyms

Spatial access methods

Definition

A Spatial Index is a data-structure designed to enable fast access to spatial data. Spatial data come in various forms, the most common being points, lines, and regions in n-dimensional space (practically, n = 2 or 3 in GIS Geographical Information System applications). Typical “selection” queries include the spatial range query (“find all objects that lie within a given query region”), and the spatial point query (“find all objects that contain a given query point”). In addition, multi-dimensional data introduce spatial relationships (such as overlapping and disjointness) and operators (e.g., nearest neighbor), which need to be efficiently supported as well. Example queries are the spatial join query (“find all pairs of objects that intersect each other”) and the nearest neighbor query (“find the five objects nearest to a given query point”). It should be noted that traditional indexing approaches (B+-trees, etc.) are not appropriate for...

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Recommended Reading

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Yannis Manolopoulos

  2. University of Piraeus, Piraeus, Greece

    Yannis Theodoridis

  3. University of California-Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA

    Vassilis J. Tsotras

Authors
  1. Yannis Manolopoulos
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  2. Yannis Theodoridis
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  3. Vassilis J. Tsotras
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, 266 Ferst Drive, 30332-0765, Atlanta, GA, USA

    LING LIU (Professor) (Professor)

  2. Database Research Group David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, N2L 3G1, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. TAMER ÖZSU (Professor and Director, University Research Chair) (Professor and Director, University Research Chair)

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© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

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Manolopoulos, Y., Theodoridis, Y., Tsotras, V.J. (2009). Spatial Indexing Techniques. In: LIU, L., ÖZSU, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-39940-9_355

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