Real-Time Integration of Geo-data in ORM

Geographic information (geo-data; i.e., data with a spatial component.) is being used for civil, political, and commercial applications. Modeling geo-data can be involved due to its often very complex structure, hence placing high demands on the modeling language employed. Many geo-applications would greatly benefit from the possibility of integrating existing geo-databases. Data integration is a notoriously hard problem, and integrating geo-databases in practice often adds the extra requirement that the integration should result in a real-time system. This paper provides a case study and a design method for real-time integration of geo-databases based on the ORM modeling language. We will show that the use of ORM is superior to competing approaches, and that the so-called ORM federation procedure will yield correct design of integrated geo-databases.