Querying Spatial Databases via Topological Invariants

International audienceThe paper investigates the use of topological annotations (called topological invariants) to answer topological queries in spatial databases. The focus is on the translation of topological queries against the spatial database into queries against the topological invariant. The languages considered are first-order on the spatial database side, and fixpoint + counting, fixpoint, and first-order on the topological invariant side. In particular, it is shown that fixpoint + counting expresses precisely all the ptime queries on topological invariants; if the regions are connected, fixpoint expresses all ptime queries on topological invariants