Database Design: Know It All

Chapter 11. Modeling and Querying Current Movement

In this chapter, we consider moving objects databases from the location management perspective. Suppose we need to manage in a database the locations of a set of mobile units (e.g., cars, trucks, helicopters, people carrying mobile phones) that are moving around right now. We wish to be able to retrieve their current positions. In fact, if it is known in the database not only where they are but also how they are moving right now, we should also be able to ask queries about the future.

After discussing some basic assumptions and issues in Section 11.1, we introduce a data model called MOST (moving objects spatiotemporal model) to describe current and expected future movement (Section 11.2). Associated ...