-SQE: A Query Engine for Answering Range Queries over Incomplete Spatial Databases

Spatial database systems built on top of distributed and heterogeneous spatial information sources such as conventional spatial databases underlying

Geographical Information Systems

(GIS), spatial data files and spatial information acquired or inferred from the Web, suffer from

data integration

and

topological consistency

problems. These issues make the globally-integrated spatial database

incomplete

, so that effectively and efficiently answering range queries over such databases represents a leading challenge for spatial database systems research. Inspired by these motivations, in this paper we propose

$\mathcal{I}$

-SQE (

Spatial Query Engine for

$\mathcal{I}$

ncomplete information

), an innovative query engine for answering range queries over incomplete spatial databases via meaningfully integrating

geometrical information

and

topological reasoning

.

$\mathcal{I}$

-SQE finally allows us to enhance the quality and the expressive power of retrieved answers by meaningfully taking advantages from the amenity of representing spatial database objects via both the geometrical and the topological level.