A Spatial Caching Framework for Map Operations in Geographical Information Systems

Caching is a well-known approach to achieve good performance and scalability in mobile computing environments. Using this technique, the query response time and the overall system performance can be extremely improved by decreasing the volume of data transferred between the server and the mobile device. However, the effectiveness of caching techniques depend greatly on the nature of the data processed by the application and the data access patterns which are specific for this type of analysis. Cache management techniques for Geographical Information Systems (GIS) deviate substantially from existing methods used with relational data, since GIS map navigation operations (e.g. panning, zooming in/out) have their own unique access patterns that differ greatly from its relational equivalents. This paper presents a spatial caching framework that can efficiently handle spatial objects and it is tailored toward the typical map navigation operations seen in GIS systems. As a result, heavyweight map operations (e.g. labeling and editing) which require multiple round-trips to the data source can significantly benefit from the use of our proposed framework. The goal of this paper is to serve as a proof of concept and to demonstrate the efficiency and scalability of the proposed spatial caching framework and its applicability in a production commercial system (Esri´s ArcGIS).