Towards maintaining consistency of spatial databases

Abstract

The consistency issues related to integrating multiple sets of spatial data in spatial information systems are presented. A systematic approach is proposed which relies first on breaking down the consistency issue by identifying a range of consistency classes which can be checked in isolation. These classes are a representative set of properties and relationships which can identify the geographic objects in data sets. Different levels of consistency are proposed, namely, total, partial and conditional, which can be checked for every consistency class. The second step is to represent the different classes and levels of consistency in the system.