Nowadays, a significant number of applications require the organization of data elements which contain at least one spatial attribute. Space support in databases poses new challenges in every part of a database management system and the capability of spatial support in the physical layer is considered very important. This has led to the design of spatial access methods to enable the effective and efficient management of spatial objects.

R-trees have a simplicity of structure and, together with their resemblance to the B-tree, allow developers to incorporate them easily into existing database management systems for the support of spatial query processing.

This book provides an extensive survey of the R-tree evolution, studying the applicability of the structure and its variations to efficient query processing, accurate proposed cost models, and implementation issues like concurrency control and parallelism. Based on the observation that space is everywhere", the authors anticipate that we are in the beginning of the era of the ubiquitous R-tree" analogous to the way B-trees were considered 25 years ago. Written for database researchers, designers and programmers as well as graduate students, this comprehensive monograph will be a welcome addition to the field.

The book successfully integrates research results of the last 20 years, in a clear and highly readable manner. It is the first book dedicated to R-trees and related access methods, and I believe it will be valuable as a reference to everyone interested in the area.

Prof. Timos Sellis, National Technical University of Athens

Zusammenfassung

Space support in databases poses new challenges in every part of a database management system & the capability of spatial support in the physical layer is considered very important. This has led to the design of spatial access methods to enable the effective & efficient management of spatial objects.

R-trees have a simplicity of structure & together with their resemblance to the B-tree, allow developers to incorporate them easily into existing database management systems for the support of spatial query processing.

This book provides an extensive survey of the R-tree evolution, studying the applicability of the structure & its variations to efficient query processing, accurate proposed cost models, & implementation issues like concurrency control and parallelism. Written for database researchers, designers & programmers as well as graduate students, this comprehensive monograph will be a welcome addition to the field.

Inhalt
Fundamental Concepts.- Dynamic Versions of R-trees.- Static Versions of R-trees.- Query Processing Issues.- Fundamental Query Processing Techniques.- Processing More Complex Queries.- R-Trees In Modern Applications.- R-trees in Spatiotemporal Databases.- R-trees for Multimedia, Warehousing and Mining.- Advanced Issues.- Query Optimization Issues.- Implementation Issues.