Conceptual data modeling for spatiotemporal applications

Many exciting potential application areas for database technology manage time-varying, spatial information. In contrast, existing database techniques, languages, and associated tools provide little built-in support for the management of such information. The focus of this paper is on enhancing existing conceptual data models with new constructs, improving their ability to conveniently model spatiotemporal aspects of information. The goal is to speed up the data modeling process and to make diagrams easier to comprehend and maintain. Based on explicitly formulated ontological foundations, the paper presents a small set of new, generic modeling constructs that may be introduced into different conceptual data models. The ER model is used as the concrete context for presenting the constructs. The semantics of the resulting spatiotemporal ER model, STER, is given in terms of the underlying ER model. STER is accompanied by a textual counterpart, and a CASE tool based on STER is currently being implemented, using the textual counterpart as its internal representation.