What on earth did I just read? The editorial piece credited to the fictional character Oleg McNoleg possesses a fine balance of creative writing and sound GIS theory – the piece was a too outré for my liking but the conclusion wrapped it up nicely.
Using two fictional prehistoric European tribes Oleg explains the two prevailing conceptual models of geographic space that are used in GIS, raster grids and vectors. The Tessellati live on arid land surviving off territorial pigs that are isolated to individual cells of equal size that cover their small kingdom – they represent the raster data structure. The Vectules are forced to occupy non-uniform spaces in trees where parrots don’t exists to seek refuge from the tempestuous oceans that rage below – this less restrictive society represent the vector data structure. It was interesting to note that the Tessellati was wiped out, however the Vectules went on to survive – I won’t speculate whether this indicates the preference of the author or not.
As bizarre as it may have been, the article was awfully effective in explaining the concepts in a memorable way, it was challenging to see the relevance of all the detailed nuances but nevertheless it grabbed my attention. The conclusions paragraph was essential to the explanation of the spatial data structures, without it the piece wouldn’t hold any water.
If anything this is a reminder of the many differences between raster and vector data structures – something worth considering in the framing of our upcoming GIS research projects.
– Othello