ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of database technology and its application to environmental monitoring. It covers relational databases, which is a mature technology, and Extensible Markup Language, which is becoming popular. The basic notions of schema, entity relation diagrams, and structured query language are presented. Then, geographic information systems are introduced as database organized as layers of georeferenced information, focusing on the major types of layers, raster and vector, and their analysis. Examples illustrate the major concepts involved in queries and analysis. Developing database skills are very important to environmental monitoring practitioners because of the need to organize and store data collected by sensors and dataloggers. This chapter concludes with material to help understand what a database system can do in terms of storage and retrieval of real-time sensor data, understand schemas and metadata of a database and their importance in data sharing through a web service.
