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Moving Objects Databases (05) by Güting, Ralf Hartmut - Schneider, Markus [Hardcover (2005)]
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August 23, 2023
It is perhaps unfortunate that despite being 18-years-old, no newer book on this subject has appeared. While it contains some useful ideas and many useful references, the actual text is less useful to a practitioner in the field than it would be to a student of computer science. This book is probably a fine (if somewhat dated) textbook, but as a coherent approach to the problem of moving object database, it has some lacks.
First, it reads like it was edited together out of papers popular in the field at the time it was written, with the result that terminology and notation, and how algorithms are presented, change from chapter to chapter. There is no synthesis, only collection of problems and incomplete solutions in no particular order and in varying degrees of detail.
It is in practical terms, gratuitously "mathy", specifying approaches mathematically when they would be clearer in English or pseudo-code or maybe even actual code (is there is no actual code in this book). Also, it repeatedly leaves off discussion of edge cases, which, if anyone has ever actually worked with geographic data, if often where 90% of the effort occurs. And there is no discussion of such necessary issues as coordinate systems or resolution or stability of algorithms. And I don't trust any of the big O notation in this book because of all the cases they hand-wave away.
This is a very academic book, and I don't mean that in a good way.
It is at its best when it drops the math and formal discussions and actually addresses the problems in natural language. And while its solutions are a real mixed bag, it does bring up a lot of interesting problems.
First, it reads like it was edited together out of papers popular in the field at the time it was written, with the result that terminology and notation, and how algorithms are presented, change from chapter to chapter. There is no synthesis, only collection of problems and incomplete solutions in no particular order and in varying degrees of detail.
It is in practical terms, gratuitously "mathy", specifying approaches mathematically when they would be clearer in English or pseudo-code or maybe even actual code (is there is no actual code in this book). Also, it repeatedly leaves off discussion of edge cases, which, if anyone has ever actually worked with geographic data, if often where 90% of the effort occurs. And there is no discussion of such necessary issues as coordinate systems or resolution or stability of algorithms. And I don't trust any of the big O notation in this book because of all the cases they hand-wave away.
This is a very academic book, and I don't mean that in a good way.
It is at its best when it drops the math and formal discussions and actually addresses the problems in natural language. And while its solutions are a real mixed bag, it does bring up a lot of interesting problems.
Displaying 1 of 1 review