A Database Approach for Raster Data Management inGeographic Information System

The efficient raster data management on very large raster or raster mosaics is becoming more and more important in spatial data sharing in a distributed GIS environment. The success of such large raster data repository or data warehouse will often demand much greater system scalability and more advanced query ability than the traditional file-based approach. In this paper, we’ll present a DBMS-independent spatial raster management solution that combines the spatial data management with the conventional corporate data in a common relational database. In particular, we’ll take ESRI’s ArcSDE[1] product as an example, following its design to implementation to give a complete view on how this can be accomplished.