MADS Data Types

Abstract

4.12 ConclusionThis chapter presented the data types defined for the MADS model. We first introduced the goals for defining yet another set of data types. While data types have been defined for either the spatial dimension, or for the temporal dimension, no existing model provides a uniform set of data types that covers several dimensions, and in particular the multi-perception dimension. We presented in Sects. 4.2 to 4.5 the basic and constructed data types, while the spatial, temporal, and multi-perception data types were presented in Sects. 4.6 to 4.10. We continued with the presentation of the varying data types in Sect. 4.11. Our main concern was to define the data types using the orthogonality and similarity characteristics that are fundamental in the MADS approach.The data types defined in this chapter provide the fundamental framework for manipulating the orthogonal dimensions of the MADS model. The data manipulation language defined in Chap. 5 uses extensively these data types for updating and querying a database.