07212 Manifesto – Constraint Databases, Geometric Elimination ang Geographic Information Systems

Abstract

During the last two decades the topic of constraint databases has evolved into a mature area of computer science with sound mathematical foundations and with a profound theoretical understanding of the expressive power of a variety of query languages. Constraint databases are especially suited for applications in which possibly infinite sets of continuous data, that have a geometric interpretation, need to be stored in a computer. Today, the most important application domains of constraint databases are geographic information systems (GIS), spatial databases and spatio-temporal databases. In these applications infinite geometrical sets of continuous data are finitely represented by means of finite combinations of polynomial equality and inequality constraints that describe these data sets (in mathematical terms these geometrical data sets are known as semi-algebraic sets and they have been extensively studied in real algebraic geometry). On the other hand, constraint databases provide us with a new view on classic (linear and nonlinear) optimization theory.