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Features
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In the world of GIS, Microsoft has not played a major part in the past, and neither has there been many Microsoft products directly supporting GIS and none in terms of spatial features for MS SQL Server. In actual fact, most databases have some form of 2D spatial capabilities: There is Oracle Spatial that goes along with the Oracle Enterprise Version. There is also PostGIS that is the spatial side of PostgreSQL. Then there is DB2, Informix and MySQL, all of which have some 2D spatial capability to a greater or lesser degree. There is also ESRI, as the main player in the GIS application world. ESRI provides a Spatial Data Engine (or SDE) called ArcSDE, that is a layer above any standard relational database.
The one database as an exception to this rule had always been MS SQL Server, with no spatial capabilities of any kind. Once Microsoft had released SQL Server 2005, still without spatial capabilities, but with the ability to extend SQL Server using CLR (Common Language Runtime) Extensions, we identified the challenge of developing a component that provides SQL Server 2005 with full 2D and 3D spatial capabilities, making SQL Server a fully spatially enabled database. SQL Server 2008 due next year, has basic support for 2D spatial data. SpatialDB extends this to full 2D support PLUS fill 3D and georaster support. SpatialDB includes sophisticated geometry construction functions for building LineStrings, Surfaces Volumetrics and so on.
SpatialDB is the worlds first full 3D Spatial Database. | |
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Performance
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Indexing Scheme
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Spatial Data Library (spatialdb) has full Spatial Indexing which fits on top of SQL Server’s indexing scheme. As such, it is a total maintenance free indexing mechanism, which is more than can be said for the R-tree indexing mechanism which is used in PostGIS and Oracle. Current benchmarks show that the indexing used in spatialdb equals the performance of R-tree indexing in PostGIS and in some cases even surpasses it. These tests were performed with very little time spent on optimisations, and with some attention to further optimisation, it is envisioned that spatialdb will outperform PostGIS in most cases. Also SpatialDB allows multiple columns in a Spatial index. This feature is not available in other spatial databases.
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Application Performance
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The responsiveness and performance of front end applications, such as windows and web, can be increased by using spatialdb, because resources for processing and memory management will be done on top of SQL Server with pre-configured settings, allowing for the ease of implementation and scalability when it comes to service oriented architecture.
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Reporting Characteristics
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Centralisation of Data
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No more segregation between business data and spatial data. Data is just data with standard access control and warehousing capabilities with cross correlation, eliminating the need for duplication / replication of data. This allows business rules to be associated to spatial data with standard operations such as grouping, sorting and filtering in a single statement.
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Reporting Services
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Input data does not need to be adjusted to cater for limitations in the reporting medium, and due to the fact that the underlying layer is just seen as normal data by Microsoft SQL Server, standard SQL Reporting Services and Analysis Services can be used reporting purposes.
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Design Implementations
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Simplicity for non-programmers
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Spatial Data Library (spatialdb) makes available all the spatial predicates and operations in a manner which is very simple for non-spatial programmers to access. As such, lower level programmers do not need to know C# programming. All they need know is basic Transact SQL and using that they are able to perform spatial operations on a central server.
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Web Enabled Graphic Applications
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By design we can centralize all geometric and graphic operations allowing web enabled graphic applications in the 2D and 3D world very simply and easily.
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Volumetric / 3d Reef Modelling
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Eliminates the need for complex and proprietary 3d engines to do intersections, stitching, and other operations. Our product has a standard 3d engine with all the required functionality, making 3d operations common, centralizing the functionality in one place, with no need for multiple external engines.
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