Such a viewpoint was proposed in this paper by several aspects: cartographic generalization was always the most challenging and creative field in cartography.Automatic generalization of spatial data in data environment was still one of the key problems in modern cartography.Based on this viewpoint,the evolvement of automatic generalization of spatial data was stated systematically in five aspects according to the view of development.Existed productions were summed up and problems were discussed,while trend and task of automatic generalization research of spatial data was also proposed.