Semantic Integrity Constraints for Spatial Databases

This paper introduces a formalization of a set of spatial semantic integrity constraints on an extended-relational database model. The formalization extends traditional notions of functional and inclusion dependencies by adding interaction with spatial attributes. This enables to specify implicit and explicit topological conditions between geometries and impose constraints on thematic attributes that depend on the geometries. We study the consistency problem for this set of integrity constraints, which rises issues about topological consistency and realizability of spatial constraints. We show that the consistency problem is not tractable and provide some conditions under which it is.