Checking the Integrity of Spatial Integrity Constraints

Abstract

Integrity constraints play a major role when the quality of spatial data is checked by automatic procedures. Nevertheless the possibilities of checking the internal consistency of the integrity constraints themselves are hardly researched jet. This work analyses the applicability of reasoning techniques like the composition of spatial relations and constraint satisfaction in networks of constraints to find conflicts and redundancies in sets of spatial semantic integrity constraints. These integrity rules specify relations among entity classes. Such relations must hold to assure that the data is fitting to the semantics intended by the data model. For spatial data many semantic integrity constraints are based on spatial properties described for example through qualitative topological or metric relations. Since integrity constraints are defined at the class level, the reasoning properties of these spatial relations can not directly be applied. Therefore a set of class relations has been defined which, combined with the instance relations, enables for the specification of integrity constraints and to reason about them.