9402478 Adams This project integrates three areas of research for Geographic Information Systems for engineering applications: a feature-based rather than a layer-based approach to GIS, object-oriented rather than relational database modeling, and the use of database management technology as the framework for GIS. New Technology and models are being brought together. This project fully implements and tests a feature model for GIS within State-of-the-art object-oriented database management system technology. The feature model can represent non-topological and semantic relationships which are missing in traditional layer-based GISs. Because of the focus on the entity rather than the spatial representation, the feature model promotes and enables complex entities with non-spatial attributes and relationships.
