Talking about geospatial structured data, it is very common to define various topological structures over different feature families. Here in Italy, you can easily find this behavior in IntesaGIS regulation. Taking a look abroad, the INSPIRE regulation has a very challenging topological structure implementation.
We usually manage geospatial databases with topological constraints and the most common way, adopted from data producers, to deploy data to GIS professionals is to release ESRI shapefiles. Not the best choice if we consider reuse and open data movement. Shapefile is a standard de facto but has various complaints: it misses topology and data validation.
Thinking in a standard OGC compliant way, a solution is GML 3 data delivery but this not the best choice when you need a versatile and efficiente data structure.
Spatialite 3 release, with topology support and its usage in table constraints, opens up a very clever scenario. A database schema with data validation on insert would improve GIS data producers workflow but also the one of simple users, gaining an always valid topological structure.
Experience told us 99% of problems is bounded to data.