Spatial database model design guidelines?

Question

Are there public guidelines on how to design a Spatial Database
Model?
i.e.
- is it better to have one table of geometries (elements) or is
it better to have many?
- is it better to store structured data (alphanumeric) in the
same table with spatial data or is it better to reference them
with foreign keys?
- etc
I guess all I need is some kind of methodology for building a
spatial model. Is there anything like this available?
Regards

Answer 1

Hi Pablo,
From a database design perspective, spatial data should be
modeled in the same way other data is modeled. For instance, if
you have river data that has 1 row in a database for every river,
then you might add another column in the same table stored with
the other information about the river that includes the location
information about the river. The same would be true of other
information. For instance, if you wanted to store the location
of all of the customers in your customers table, it is simple
another column in the customers table.
<< - is it better to have one table of geometries (elements) or
is it better to have many? >>
So geometries are just column information like other column
information that you store in a table. There shouldn't be
separate tables that hold only geometry information.
<< - is it better to store structured data (alphanumeric) in the
same table with spatial data or is it better to reference them
with foreign keys? >>
Treat spatial data the same way from a design standpoint as other
data.
Hope this helps.
Dan