An Overview Of The SDM Technology

Abstract

The GIS and AM/FM market has changed rapidly in the last few years; spatial data management has moved from the traditional approaches toward new solutions, more suited to customers needs. A new specific and useful software tool, the SDM, is emerging in answer to the requirements of those customers (utilities, national agencies, etc...) who have large databases and expensive legacy systems and need integrated solutions without an 'information island'. Traditional GIS and AM/FM solutions have widely concentrated to support final user activities; little has been done on spatial data management capabilities. Under the stimulus of the market, the number of available products with new technological solutions is growing. The traditional GIS and AM/FM vendors are now competing with new players to control a niche market but relevant under an economical point of view. In this paper, we give an overview of the technology, market and trends of commercial SDMs based on commercial DBMSs. Initially, we classify the products in two classes according to the degree of integration, between the SDM and DBMS, and the understanding of the DBMS technology. There are three different kinds of integration, from the tightest to the loosest, and three understandings of the DBMS technology: RDBMS, ORDBMS and OODBMS. Due to the novelty of these SDMs and to the absence of specific market analysis data, evaluations of market trends can not be done for a specific product but reasonable considerations can be argued for the two classes defined above. Transactions on Information and Communications Technologies vol 18, © 1998 WIT Press, www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3517