Geographic Information Systems need abilities that enable the spatio-temporal modeling. The emerging object-oriented database standard, the ODMG-93, has insufficient ability to support such facilities. Therefore, it must be extended for Geographic Information Systems. In this thesis, the ODMG-93 object model is extended with three additional facilities. First, spatial classes are added for enabling spatial modeling. Most of spatial classes proposed in the literature have three defects, those are the inadequate generalization hierarchy, too much specialized and complex spatial classes, and insufficient consideration of topological information. We propose a minimal set of spatial classes which resolves such defects. Second, a version mechanism and temporal classes are added for enabling the temporal modeling. Traditional version mechanisms cannot be used for modeling temporal aspects, such as the transaction time and the valid time. We propose a solution which can model such temporal aspects. Finally, the semantics of the is-part-of relationship and its managing rules are added. These extensions make it possible to use the ODMG-93 object model for Geographic Information Systems. Through the extended object model, we can design a spatio-temporal schema.
In addition, a design of the schema manager is included. The schema manager manages the spatio-temporal schema generated from the extended object model. Some design issues are resolved, such as storing variable length information, ability to inherit properties of a super class, and improving efficiency without reducing coherency of information management.
