MBRs As Spatial Metadata
Owing to their simplicity of expression and ease of use for searching, MBRs (frequently as "bounding box" or "bounding coordinates") are also commonly included in relevant standards for geospatial metadata, i.e. metadata that describes spatial (geographic) objects; examples include DCMI Box as an extension to the Dublin Core metadata scheme, "Bounding Coordinates" in the (U.S.) FGDC metadata standard, and "Geographic Bounding Box" in the (2003-current) ISO 19115 Metadata Standard for geographic information (ISO/TC 211). It is also (as "boundingBox") an element in Geography Markup Language (GML), that is utilised by a range of Web Service specifications from the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). In the ISO 19107 Spatial Schema (ISO/TC 211), MBR appears as the datatype GM_Envelope that is returned by the envelope operation on the root class GM_Object.
Web-accessible articles that deal further with the concept of the MBR include "Unlocking the Mysteries of the Bounding Box" by Douglas R. Caldwell, and "Geographic Database Search Interfaces and the Equatorial Cylindrical Equidistant Projection" by Ross S. Swick and Kenneth W. Knowles. The section on "searching" on the Geospatial Methods site is also well worth investigating. See also documentation for specific spatially enabled databases, e.g.,.
Read more about this topic: Minimum Bounding Rectangle