Neighborhood Query and Analysis with GeoSAL, a Spatial Database Language

Although some database query languages provide basic functions useful for statistical data analysis and others contain spatial query capabilities, there is as yet no database language implementation which satisfies even basic requirements of spatial analysis GeoSAL is a database language being designed to address the solution of descriptive data analysis tasks in general, and spatial analysis problems m particular. The objective of the development of GeoSAL is to free analyst users from procedural programming while retaining a systematic and parsimonious language structure embedding fundamental as well as domain-specific concepts. A number of spatial queries and analyses are characterized by the application of neighborhood conditions to spatial objects Thus, the specification and evaluation of neighborhood conditions within a spatial database language is an important issue in spatial database research. In this paper, several kinds of neighboring relationships are formulated in GeoSAL and the use of the resulting expressions is shown in examples. The capacity of GeoSAL to perform spatial operations involving non-trivial neighborhood conditions is thus demonslxated.