A relational database for non-manipulative representation of solid objects

As the heart of any solid modelling system, much effort has been spent on formulating the data models which represent the shape of a polyhedral solid object within the computer in an accurate, unique and complete manner. Most of this effort has been devoted to make the models manipulateable in terms of computational efficiency, and preserve their semantic integrity. The price paid for achieving these goals is a proliferation of cross-reference data links which, coupled with multiple redundancy, renders the models inefficient for storage or transmission over communication channels. Moreover, the interrogation of these models by non-manipulative applications is usually unsupported functionally, requiring direct accesses to the data, which involves extensive pointer chasing and therefore high familiarity with the manipulative data structure.This paper presents an example relational model as a complementary logical scheme for viewing the shape database that facilitates compact storage and supports non-manipulative query operations through the projection, selection and join operators defined for the relational model, without requiring expert knowledge of the manipulative structure. The flexibility of the relational model, compared with that of the hierarchical, manipulative one, allows easy extensibility and the association of non-geometric attributes with each data item.