ABSTRACT
One can distinguish between two ways of incorporating database management system (DBMS) in geographic information systems (GIS). The first way is that GIS vendors use DBMS mainly to store thematic data. The second way to integrate DBMS within GIS is DBMS offering support of designers spatial data types. Most GIS and computer aided design system users would be concerned if there was no multi-user access possible on data during design processes. There is no question that the results of their work being constructed on shared data should be automatically stored within the database periodically. Many DBMSs have evolved to offer spatial functionality, which brings further benefits for GIS and construction applications. The spatial functionality concerns the support of spatial data types in the data model, the implementation of spatial access methods, and the execution of spatial database queries. Geometry and topology are often used in Geo-DBMS terminology as synonyms to denote the different ways of describing spatial data types.
