Soft Querying Features in GeoJSON Documents: The GeoSoft Proposal

Abstract Since the advent of $$\textit{JSON}$$ JSON as a popular format for exchanging large amounts of data, a novel category of NoSQL database systems, named $$\textit{JSON}$$ JSON document stores, has emerged for storing $$\textit{JSON}$$ JSON data sets; in fact, these novel databases are able to natively manage collections of $$\textit{JSON}$$ JSON documents. To help analysts and data engineers query and integrate $$\textit{JSON}$$ JSON data sets persistently saved in $$\textit{JSON}$$ JSON document stores, the J-CO Framework has been developed (at the University of Bergamo, Italy): it is built around a novel query language, named J-CO-QL $$^{+}$$ + , that provides sophisticated features, including soft-querying capabilities. However, J-CO-QL $$^{+}$$ + (as the other languages for querying $$\textit{JSON}$$ JSON data sets) is designed to be general purpose; consequently, it can be cumbersome for users to apply it on specific data formats. This is the case of GeoJSON , a specific and popular $$\textit{JSON}$$ JSON data format that is designed to represent geographical information layers. This paper presents the latest evolution of GeoSoft , a novel high-level “domain-specific language” that is specifically designed to express complex queries on the GeoJSON documents, including soft-queries. GeoSoft is inspired to the classical SQL language, so as to reduce the learning curve of potential users. GeoSoft queries are translated into J-CO-QL $$^{+}$$ + scripts, to be actually executed.