The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences
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Citation
Articles | Volume XLI-B4
https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-XLI-B4-545-2016
https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-XLI-B4-545-2016
14 Jun 2016
 | 14 Jun 2016

PROVIDING R-TREE SUPPORT FOR MONGODB

Longgang Xiang, Xiaotian Shao, and Dehao Wang

Keywords: R-tree, Spatial index, MongoDB

Abstract. Supporting large amounts of spatial data is a significant characteristic of modern databases. However, unlike some mature relational databases, such as Oracle and PostgreSQL, most of current burgeoning NoSQL databases are not well designed for storing geospatial data, which is becoming increasingly important in various fields. In this paper, we propose a novel method to provide R-tree index, as well as corresponding spatial range query and nearest neighbour query functions, for MongoDB, one of the most prevalent NoSQL databases. First, after in-depth analysis of MongoDB’s features, we devise an efficient tabular document structure which flattens R-tree index into MongoDB collections. Further, relevant mechanisms of R-tree operations are issued, and then we discuss in detail how to integrate R-tree into MongoDB. Finally, we present the experimental results which show that our proposed method out-performs the built-in spatial index of MongoDB. Our research will greatly facilitate big data management issues with MongoDB in a variety of geospatial information applications.