The VASCO R-tree JAVA Applet

Features of the VASCO R-tree JAVA TM applet are described to support its demonstration. This includes an explanation of the different R-tree node splitting methods that are implemented in VASCO and of the functionality of the control panel of the applet. The applet enables users to visualize the different variants of the R-tree as well as observe their behavior for finding the nearest neighbors to a query point and the objects within a given query window in an incremental manner. The applet can be found at http://www.cs.umd.edu/hjs/rtrees/index.html. Keywords R-trees, JAVA TM applet, VASCO, spatial databases, worldwide web, incremental nearest neighbor finding, window queries, ranking 1 INTRODUCTION The representation of spatial data is an important issue in spatial databases as well as in a wide variety of applications including computer graphics, computational geometry, computer vision, pattern recognition, and geographic information systems (GIS) (e.g., Samet (1990a) and Sam..