由於不同GIS軟體設計的格式、軟體架構以及運作程序，使得軟體建置之功能通常僅適用於本身設計之格式。這個限制無可避免的形成地理資料在分享、流通以及相互操作上之阻礙，因為各軟體對應之查詢模式常常互不相容，例如對不同資料格式之地理資料進行空間查詢之困難即為一個典型的問題，也因此阻礙了在分散式地理資料環境中查詢及取得資料的可能性。地理資料之標準描述提供我們一個不再需要同時處理不同格式資料之可能策略，無論資料是由誰建置或原來之格式為何，僅須將資料轉換成標準資料格式，便可以同一運作模式進行查詢。近年來，由開放式地理資訊系統協會-OGC（OpenGIS Consortium）提議之地理標示語言-GML（Geography Markup Language）已成為地理資料描述標準之最佳選擇。
　　本研究擬探討查詢GML格式記錄資料的議題，並且希望提出一從資料存取、過濾到展示的可行運作程序。主要之概念在於回傳之查詢結果同樣為GML格式，但僅包含滿足約制條件之特徵物，因此可以僅處理GML格式之資料，並且任何可展示GML資料之軟體皆可用於展示查詢結果，因此GML查詢模組能與GIS軟體操作資料一般。研究中也引入詮釋資料處理程序，因為查詢結果可能來自於不同之GML檔案，詮釋資料能輔助說明查詢結果。本研究中之空間查詢模組是以OGC提出之位相關係為基礎，並且考量人類空間認知進行擴充，建立基本位相關係與類似空間敘述之自然語言的正確對應關係，將可減少一般使用者必須之訓練。
　　隨著GML查詢模組之發展，不同格式之地理資料的問題將不再是開放式地理資料環境中主要之障礙。我們發現執行空間查詢時必須同時處理不同維度之空間實體以及空間資料型別。另外，單一空間查詢針對不同實體之空間資料型別所適用之位相關係也並不完全相同。而且當處理複雜的空間實體時，也必須特別注意，因為使用者可能誤解回傳之查詢結果而不自知。

　　Due to the various design on the format, software architecture, and operating procedures of different GIS software, their built-in functions are usually only applicable to the native data format designed. This inevitably imposes obstacles on the sharing, distribution and interoperability of geographic data. A typical scenario is the difficulty to issue a spatial query upon geographic data in different data formats because their corresponding query modules are often incompatible. Consequently it impedes us to query and acquire all available data in a distributed geographic data environment. The standardized description of geographic data provides a possibility that we no longer need to simultaneously manage data in various formats, and only need to concentrate on the standardized data format instead, regardless by whom data were created and what format they were created originally. Geographic Markup Language (GML), proposed by OpenGIS Consortium, has emerged as a strong candidate for the standard of geographic data description in recent years.
　　This research intends to investigate the issue of querying data recorded in GML (Geography Markup Language) format and propose a feasible operation procedure from data access, filtering and representation. The core idea is to return the queried results in GML as well, but only containing those features fulfilling the constraints. The merits of this approach is we only need to handle data in GML format, and any GML viewer can be used to display queried results. The interaction of GML query module is therefore no different from those corresponding query modules in any current GIS software. We further introduce metadata in the querying process, as it may serve as an important reference for interpreting queried results, particularly when they come from different GML files. The spatial query module in this research is based on the topological relationship model by OGC and later expanded to take human spatial cognition into consideration. The successful link between primitive topological relationships and natural language-like spatial predicates reduce the required training to naïve users.
　　With the development of GML query module, the issue of different format of geographic data is no longer a major obstacle in OpenGIS data environment. We find it is necessary to simultaneously manage spatial entities in different dimensionality and spatial data types while processing a spatial query. Besides, the corresponding primitive topological relationships for an individual spatial query may be rather different depending on the spatial data types of the spatial entities. While dealing with complex types of spatial entities, this should receive serious attention, as users may misinterpret the returned queried results while they never notice.

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