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I am looking for a comprehensive introduction to design and analysis of spatial data structures.

If possible, please only link to online resources unless the offline resources is especially of note.

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It might help to expand this question with details such as what research you have done already, what GIS software package you are interested in using, and what purpose this "introduction" is to serve. – blah238 Feb 24 '12 at 0:31
Should this be a community wiki? There are likely to be many correct answers. – GeoKevin Feb 25 '12 at 12:44
@Kevin: Fine with me, when I went to edit the question just know though I didn't see the check-box on the lower right of the body-text box to make it a community wiki. Am I missing something? I would say that if anyone wants to change it to a wiki, they should likely make an effort to merge the questions into one answer, instead of just flipping a community wiki switch, which won't help transition the question in my opinion. – blunders Feb 25 '12 at 13:11
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I did the CW thing, @blunders, but I'm reluctant to merge answers because not all of them address the question in the same way: so far, most don't even provide the online references the question asks for. – whuber♦ Feb 25 '12 at 18:54
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@whuber: Easy fix for that is to just change the question to request references be online, unless the offline resource is of note -- then it is not an issue, right? – blunders Feb 25 '12 at 19:35

5 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

Try and get an online copy of ESRI's excellent book, whose name escapes me, about data structures:

Modeling our world: the ESRI guide to geodatabase design

And another is:

Geographic information systems and science by Paul Longley, available on Google books and has a chapter on what you are looking for.

Try the ESRI book store as well. It has some interesting books for this area.

Also, have a look here at the GIS Cafe which has links to some excellent books.

Good luck

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up vote 2 down vote

I just finished reading GIS Basics by Stephen Wise. It is an excellent book, on how Various types of GIS data is Structured. It also deal with some basic GIS algorithms and would be a wonderful starting point.

I know that it is not an online reference, but you can use Amazon's Look Inside to see a few pages.

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up vote 4 down vote

I know it's not online, but amazon is so easy...you said 'comprehensive' so I'd recommend Computational Geometry. If you're actually building data structures, not just using them, than this book is a good friend. Many examples are in pseudocode, The mathematical proofs are fairly dense but can be ignored.

I forgot about the Samet Spatial Data Structures site which has been around for a while, and has java applet demos as well as (I think) source code.

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up vote 1 down vote

In addition to the resource already mentioned, I'd strongly recommend checking out Simon Greener's site, SpatialDB Advisor. It's been a great resource for me over the years.

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