14.25

Spatial indices that can index spatial intervals can conceptually be used to index temporal data by treating valid time as a time interval. What is the problem with doing so, and how is the problem solved?


The problem of using a spatial index is that the end time of an interval may be infinity (perhaps represented by a very large value), whereas spatial indices typically assume that bounding boxes are finite, and may have poor performance if bounding boxes are very large. This problem can be dealt with as follows:

Read more in section 14.10.2 (Indexing Temporal Data).