Oracle9i provides location-based services that support a wide range of applications -- from automated mapping/facilities management and geographic information systems (GIS), to wireless location services and location-enabled e-business. The Oracle location platform includes the Oracle9i Database, Application Server, and E-Business Suite.

Oracle Spatial and Locator provide native data management in the Oracle9i Database for location information such as road networks, wireless service boundaries, and geocoded customer addresses. Since location data is fully integrated with the database, Oracle Spatial allows users -- e-business apps, portals, wireless service providers -- to easily incorporate location information directly in their applications and services.

Applications which can benefit from Oracle Spatial:

• Telco: Location-Based Services
• Oil and Gas Exploration/Distribution
• In-vehicle Telematics
• Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
• Utilities
• Data Warehousing/Business Intelligence
• Customer Relationship Management and other e-Business apps

Oracle Spatial and Oracle Locator have been adopted as the preferred location platform by leading GIS and LBS vendors. Oracle Spatial and Oracle Locator have also been deployed by telecommunications, utilities, and e-government organizations worldwide.

• Oracle Spatial is an option for Oracle9i Enterprise Edition that provides advanced spatial features to support high-end GIS solutions.
• Oracle Locator provides a subset of Oracle Spatial capabilities, to support location-based services and partner-based GIS applications.
  More on Oracle Locator / Spatial differences

Features of Oracle Spatial and Locator:  

• Open, standard SQL access to all spatial functions and operations
• Spatial object type storage accommodating geometry-type and linear referencing 
• Spatial operators and functions, including aggregate functions
• Layer geometry type constraints
• Fast R-tree and quadtree indexing
• Whole earth geometry model providing comprehensive storage, management and use of geodetic data
• Partitioning support for spatial indexes
• Powerful linear referencing system (Spatial only)
• Support for parallel index builds for spatial indexes
• Tools supporting seamless integration of heterogeneous data (fusion) including projection management and coordinate transformation (Spatial only)
• Integration with Oracle9i Application Server
• NEW! Integration with Oracle9i Application Server MapViewer tool

New Oracle9i Features:

• Geodetic Coordinate Support: Oracle Spatial functions return accurate lengths, areas, and distances for both projected and geodetic data (i.e., angular coordinates defined relative to a particular model of the shape of the earth). Over 30 of the most common distance and area units are supported.
• Function-Based Indexes: Enable Oracle Spatial queries and analysis on any relational data associated with a location attribute without creating and preloading an Oracle Spatial column of type SDO_GEOMETRY.  Users can create spatial indexes on spatial data stored in relational columns (for example in columns of longitude and latitude).
• Spatial Aggregates: Perform a specified aggregate operation (for example, minimum bounding rectangle, union, etc.) on a set of input geometries (rather than just one or two geometries), and return a single geometry object. Aggregates improve performance and simplify coding.
• Partitioning Support for Spatial Indexes: Spatial indexes can be partitioned in association with partitioned tables (range partitioning).  Benefits: 
  • Reduced response times for long-running or concurrent queries; partitioning can reduce disk I/O operations 
  • Easier index maintenance, because of partition-level create and rebuild operations 
  • Indexes on partitions can be rebuilt without affecting the queries on other partitions
  • Storage parameters for each local index can be changed independent of other partitions.

  Splitting, merging, and exchanging partitions are supported with 9i Release 2.

• Parallel Spatial Index Creation (9i Release 2): Spatial index creation can be subdivided into smaller tasks that can be performed in parallel, making use of unused hardware (CPU) resources. This can provide a significant time savings during index builds. Supported for both R-tree and quadtree indexes.
  
• Long transactions: Oracle Spatial is fully integrated with the Oracle Database Workspace Manager feature, which provides shareable workspaces in which to version live data. It supports long transactions for automated mapping/facilities management and engineering applications. Ideally suited for any GIS applications that extend over long periods and/or are comprised of many collaborators working at remote locations.
• Performance Enhancements: Oracle9i and 9i Release 2 provide significant improvements to spatial data storage and indexing performance over previous releases.
  • Faster R-tree index builds/updates: R-tree indexes can be created up to 50% faster with 9i Release 2 than with 9i, and up to 20% faster with release 9i than with 8.1.7. Building indexes in parallel can provide even more time savings. R-tree update performance is significantly faster. LBS asset tracking, fleet management, cadastral management applications will benefit.
  • Faster spatial queries: Many spatial queries also run significantly faster than before:
    • Up to 200% faster: queries that use secondary filters, VALIDATE_GEOMETRY function
    • Up to 40% faster: WITHIN_DISTANCE queries with R-tree indexes,, queries that use secondary filters on geodetic data
    • Up to 30% faster: WITHIN_DISTANCE queries on linear features (key for wireless LBS, transportation, pipeline/asset management)
    • Partitioning spatial data can provide additional performance gains on queries. Spatial aggregate functions speed retrieval of large sets of SDO_GEOMETRY objects.

Pre-Integrated Location Services Infrastructure Using Oracle9i & Oracle9i Application Server

Only Oracle offers a completely pre-integrated location services infrastructure which includes the Oracle9i Database, Oracle Spatial, and Oracle9i Application Server. Oracle9i Application Server (Oracle9iAS) Release 2.0 includes MapViewer, a map rendering and viewing component used for visualizing geospatial data managed by Oracle Spatial. MapViewer is included with the Oracle9iAS Wireless and Portal installation. MapViewer is designed as a lightweight tool to provide general map rendering visualization requirements of e-business and location-based service developers. The Oracle9iAS MapViewer feature enables application developers to embed a map rendering capability directly into existing e-business applications. Application developers using the Oracle9iAS OC4J will have a tightly integrated map rendering and map visualization component for location and map data stored in Oracle9i with Oracle Spatial.

• Oracle9iAS MapViewer is available for download from OTN with the production version of Oracle9iAS release 2.0. For more information, refer to Oracle9iAS documentation.

Open Standards: Oracle consistently works to help shape, drive, implement and support the latest open standards, particularly in the area of location-based services. Oracle is committed to supporting standards / standards initiatives, such as:

• OpenGIS Consortium
  • Simple Features guidelines
  • Geographic Markup Language (GML)
  • Open Location Service interfaces
• SQL92
  • Oracle Spatial's object-relational model for geometry storage conforms to SQL 92 representation of points, lines, polygons

More Info

	Oracle Spatial - for technical information, sample code, discussion forum and latest software/utility downloads
	Oracle Spatial Training for instructor led and online training resources on Oracle Spatial
	Oracle Locator Data Sheet - includes Locator vs. Spatial feature chart (see end of document)
	Oracle9iAS Wireless provides location-based services for wireless and mobile devices

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