ORACLE® SPATIAL OPTION AND ORACLE® LOCATOR
Location Features in Oracle Database 10g

This paper describes the features associated with the Oracle® Spatial option and Oracle Locator. Oracle Locator -- a feature of Oracle Database 10g™ (both Standard and Enterprise Editions) -- provides core location functionality needed by most customer applications and partner-based GIS solutions. Oracle Spatial, an option for Oracle Enterprise Edition, augments Locator with additional high-end spatial functionality for complex GIS applications.

This release provides significant new location capabilities that address the business critical needs of current and new Oracle customers. New capabilities and performance enhancements benefit developers of business applications, enterprise-class Geographic Information Systems customers (such as land management, energy, defense/homeland security), and location services providers and users.

Most business information has a location component, such as customer addresses, sales territories, and wireless service boundaries. Businesses can take advantage of their geographic information by incorporating location analysis into their information systems. This allows organizations to make better decisions and respond to customers more effectively.

Oracle Database 10g provides the foundation for deploying enterprise-wide spatial information systems, location-enabled e-Business applications, and wireless location-based services. Oracle Database 10g enables e-Business applications (such as call centers, and marketing and sales applications), portals and wireless service providers to easily integrate location data and analysis into their corporate information systems.

Oracle Locator, a feature of Oracle Database (Standard and Enterprise Editions), provides core location functionality needed by most customer applications and partner solutions. (Locator is not a solution for complex GIS applications.) Developers can extend existing Oracle-based applications, since with Locator they can easily incorporate location information directly in their applications and services. This is possible because location data is fully integrated in the Oracle server itself. Geographic and location data are manipulated using the same semantics applied to the CHAR, DATE or INTEGER types that are familiar to all users of SQL. 

Oracle Spatial, an option to Oracle Database Enterprise Edition, augments Locator, and provides a robust foundation for complex GIS applications which require more spatial analysis and processing in Oracle Database. It includes spatial functions (including area, buffer, centroid calculations), advanced coordinate systems support, linear referencing system, and aggregate functions. Significant new capabilities in this release address the challenging business-critical requirements from the public sector, defense, logistics, energy exploration, and business geographics domains. 

Specific Locator features include:

• An object type that describes and supports geometries such as points, lines, polygons 
• Fast R-tree indexing
• Spatial operators that use the spatial index for performing queries that determine the interaction of geometric features
  • NEW! Simplifed relationship operators
• Open, standard SQL access to spatial operations
• Whole Earth geometry model that provides comprehensive storage, management and use of geodetic data
• Partitioning support for spatial indexes
• Function-based spatial indexes
• Support for parallel index builds for R-tree indexes
• Integration with Oracle Application Server 10g Wireless 
• Integration with Oracle Application Server 10g MapViewer tool
• NEW! Parallel spatial queries

The Oracle Spatial option includes all of the features in Oracle Locator, plus the following features:

• Powerful linear referencing system
• Spatial functions such as buffer generation, centroids, area and length calculations, and aggregate functions (e.g. unions and user defined aggregates)
• Coordinate transformations
• NEW! GeoRaster data type that natively manages georeferenced raster imagery (eg satellite imagery, gridded data) in Oracle Database 10g
• NEW! A data model and schema that persistently store topology
• NEW! A data model to store network (graph) structure
• NEW! Geocoding engine
• NEW! Spatial analytic functions

This paper includes

• Oracle Locator feature descriptions
• Oracle Spatial feature descriptions
• Detailed Locator and Spatial feature charts
• Links to more information about Locator, Spatial, and related products

ORACLE LOCATOR - LOCATION CAPABILITIES IN EVERY ORACLE DATABASE

Oracle Locator features are described in detail below.

Geometry, Layers
Oracle Locator supports three basic geometric forms that represent geographic and location data:

• Points: Points can represent locations such as buildings, fire hydrants, utility poles, oil rigs, boxcars, or roaming vehicles.
• Lines: Lines can represent things like roads, railroad lines, utility lines, or fault lines.
• Polygons and complex polygons with holes: Polygons can represent things like outlines of cities, districts, flood plains, or oil and gas fields. A polygon with a hole might geographically represent a parcel of land surrounding a patch of wetlands.

In addition to the geometric elements noted above, Oracle Locator supports the following geometry types:

• Arc strings
• Compound polygons
• Circles
• Rectangles

Spatial Indexing: R-trees
Oracle Locator applies spatial indexes - or R-tree indexes - to location data in an Oracle Database.  R-tree indexes are simple to create, and almost no tuning is required to achieve optimal performance. R-tree indexes can be created on two, three, or four dimensions of spatial data.

Typical queries specify a window of interest and retrieve all data intersecting or contained in the specified query window. 

An R-tree index approximates each geometry with the smallest single rectangle that encloses the geometry (called the minimum bounding rectangle, or MBR).

For a layer of geometries, an R-tree index consists of a hierarchical index on the minimum bounding rectangles of the geometries in the layer. Because R-tree indexes are fast and work directly on geodetic data they are the preferred indexing mechanism for working with spatial data.  Geodetic data is data consisting of angular coordinates (longitude and latitude) that are defined relative to a particular representation of the figure of Earth, or datum.
 

Significant performance improvements have been made to spatial R-tree indexing for this release. The spatial index uses the extensible indexing mechanism in Oracle Database 10g, providing maintenance operations of the index on insert, update, and delete. This results in increased ease of use.

Note: the use of spatial quadtree indexes is discouraged. You are strongly encouraged to use R-tree indexing for spatial indexes, unless you need to continue using quadtree indexes for special situations. Information about quadtree indexing can be found in a separate guide, Oracle Spatial Quadtree Indexing, posted on the Oracle Technology Network at http://otn.oracle.com/products/spatial .

Spatial Operators
The interaction of various geometric features can be determined through the use of comparison operators, such as SDO_RELATE, SDO_CONTAINS, SDO_COVERS, SDO_ANYINTERACT (any interaction), and others. This permits answers to such requests as "list all the school zones crossed by this railroad line," or "find all pizza parlors within this area of interest." With this release, new relationship operators are included as convenient alternatives to using SDO_RELATE with a mask value.

Locator also provides one function which computes distance between two geometry objects.  This is useful for location-based services queries, such as "return the 10 hotels which are closest to the airport, and distance in miles to each."  More advanced functions such as computing area or returning new geometries such as buffers, centroids, unions, intersections, or certain spatial aggregates require the Oracle Spatial option.  

Fast Access With Two-Tiered Queries 
Until now, database performance has largely been a factor of database size and index efficiency. But with Oracle Locator in Oracle Database 10g, performance is a function of the amount of data actually retrieved. Performance is optimized through the use of a spatial index and a two-tiered query model. This model significantly reduces load and query processing overhead and provides excellent scalability as the spatial data volume grows. The first tier, or primary filter, permits fast selection of a small number of candidate records to pass along to the secondary filter. The primary filter uses approximations stored in the spatial index to reduce computational complexity.

The secondary filter applies exact computational geometry to the result set of the primary filter. These exact computations yield the final answer to a query. The secondary filter operations are more computationally intense, but they are only applied to the relatively small result set from the primary filter.

Queries can be spatially constrained, as defined by an "area of interest" chosen by the user. Eliminating data outside the area of interest from consideration during queries ensures optimum performance levels. 

Location queries, using standard SQL, can be made in a number of ways. For example, two-dimensional window extracts are possible as range searches, proximity searches, and polygon searches.

Graphical Tools for Improved Manageability 
Oracle Enterprise Manager simplifies the creation and management of spatial tables and indexes through easy-to-use graphical user interfaces. It supports R-tree indexes. The Spatial Index Advisor application, which is integrated into the Oracle Enterprise Manager framework, helps database administrators to analyze spatial indexes, and understand performance of spatial queries. 

Whole Earth Geometry Model for Geodetic Coordinate Support
Oracle Locator and Oracle Spatial provide a whole Earth geometry model which takes into account the curvature of the Earth’s surface when performing calculations on geodetic data. The Oracle Locator distance function returns accurate distances for both projected and geodetic data (i.e., angular coordinates defined relative to a particular model of the shape of the Earth). Likewise, functions included with the Oracle Spatial option return accurate lengths and areas for both projected and geodetic data. Oracle supports over 30 of the most commonly used distance and area units which are useful for both geodetic and projected data, e.g. foot/square foot, meter/square meter, kilometer/square kilometer, and so on. 

Function-Based Index Support 
A function-based index enables spatial queries and analysis on any relational data associated with a location attribute without creating and preloading a column of type SDO_GEOMETRY. 

Users can create spatial indexes on location data stored in relational columns (for example in columns of longitude and latitude). Spatial operators can search function-based indexes as well as traditional spatial indexes.  This spatial index will make it possible to invoke spatial operators on these relational columns without the need to create an SDO_GEOMETRY column. 

This is useful for business geographic applications which have a schema for storing location data but cannot change their current schema to move the location data to a column of type SDO_GEOMETRY. 

Partitioning Support for Spatial Indexes 
Spatial indexes associated with partitioned tables can be partitioned (range partitioning is supported).  Partitioned spatial indexes can provide the following benefits: 

• Reduced response times for long-running queries; partitioning can reduce disk I/O operations. 
• Reduced response times for concurrent queries; I/O operations run concurrently on each partition. 
• Easier index maintenance, because of partition-level create and rebuild operations. 
• Ability to rebuild indexes on partitions without affecting the queries on other partitions.
• Ability to change storage parameters for each local index independent of other partitions. 

Note: This feature requires the Partitioning Option to Enterprise Edition, and is not supported at all for Standard Edition.

Parallel Spatial Index Creation
Spatial indexes and index partitions can be created in parallel. R-tree index creation can be subdivided into smaller tasks that can be performed in parallel, making use of unused hardware (CPU) resources. For certain spatial data sets and index types and parameters, parallel index creation can substantially increase index build performance and provide a significant time savings. Large non-point datasets (commonly used in many standard GIS applications) can show dramatic performance improvements. 

Note: This feature is not supported for Standard Edition.

Parallel Spatial Queries - NEW with 10g
Spatial queries can now run in parallel on partitioned spatial indexes, improving the performance of "within distance", "nearest neighbor", and "relate" queries. Performance scales with the number of CPUs used to execute a query. This helps location service and land management applications, which need to execute high volumes of spatial queries quickly.

Note: This feature is not supported for Standard Edition.

Performance Enhancements - NEW with 10g
Applications ranging from location-based services to GIS asset management and land management must frequently update and query location data — and demand high performance. With every new release, Oracle Locator and Spatial have provided leaps in performance to address this requirement. Oracle Locator in Oracle Database 10g continues to do so – providing performance improvements of several orders of magnitude over release 9.2:

• R-tree index inserts run 5-10 times faster
• R-tree index update time has been reduced by 40% or more - especially useful for enterprise geographic information systems and location-based services
• Spatial distance queries and “relate” queries run 20-40% faster
• Spatial joins run 2-6 times faster

Other Oracle Locator features can be used to boost performance. For parallel queries on partitioned spatial indexes, performance scales with the number of CPUs used to execute the query. Building spatial R-tree indexes in parallel can dramatically reduce index creation time for very large non-point spatial datasets. Spatial aggregate functions speed retrieval of large sets of SDO_GEOMETRY objects. (Note: Locator includes the SDO_AGGR_MBR function; all other spatial aggregate functions are included only with the Oracle Spatial option.)

Enterprise Features Supporting Locator In Oracle Database 10g
Oracle Database 10g provides powerful, reliable support for an organization’s mission-critical applications. These enterprise features enrich Oracle’s location capabilities via a flexible Internet deployment architecture, object capabilities, and robust data management utilities that ensure data integrity, data recovery, and data security. This level of support can only exist in the homogenous environment of an enterprise database solution, and cannot be effectively replicated in a hybrid solution that marries an external location-based solution with a traditional enterprise solution, no matter how tightly integrated the two components may appear.

Oracle Locator takes full advantage of expanded database size limits, high-performance VLDB maintenance utilities, replication, workspace manager (versioning), faster backup and recovery, and partitioning.  The full range of Oracle utilities (e.g. SQL*Loader,  etc.) are also available to ease migration and help upgrade applications which use the location-based services features. Some of these key enterprise features have been introduced in the sections above; below are other key features. 

Replication
With Oracle Locator, Oracle's Advanced Replication capabilities can be used for location data. For example, distributed systems that involve geographically dispersed yet logically replicated web sites, can take advantage of synchronized replication of spatial data objects across multiple databases.

Note: Multimaster replication is offered with the Enterprise Edition database only. Materialized view replication is offered on both Standard and Enterprise Editions. Refer to Oracle Database Advanced Replication, 10g Release 1 manual for more information about Advanced Replication features.

Database Workspaces
Oracle Workspace Manager, a feature of Oracle Database, provides a virtual environment (workspaces) that allows current, proposed and historical values for data to be managed in the same database. Workspaces can be shared and used to: isolate a collection of changes to production data until they are approved and merged into production; keep a long term history of changes to data; and create multiple data scenarios based on a common data set for "what if" analysis.  

Standard/Enterprise Edition Availability for Database Features
Oracle Locator is available on both Standard and Enterprise Editions. Some functionality requires core server features, which are not available or are limited on Standard Edition. Some of those features and their availability are listed below:

Feature	Standard/Enterprise Edition Availability
Parallel spatial index builds	Supported on Enterprise Edition only
Parallel spatial queries	Supported on Enterprise Edition only
Partitioned spatial indexes	Requires Partitioning Option to Oracle Enterprise Edition.  Not supported on Standard Edition.
Multimaster replication of SDO_GEOMETRY objects	Supported on Enterprise Edition only. (Materialized view replication for spatial objects is supported on both Standard and Enterprise Editions. For more information, refer to Oracle Database Advanced Replication, 10g Release 1.)

ORACLE SPATIAL: EXTENDING THE POWER OF THE DOMINANT SPATIAL DATABASE PLATFORM
With Oracle Database 10g, the Oracle Spatial option includes significant new capabilities addressing business-critical requirements of the public sector, defense, logistics, energy exploration, and business geographics domains -- extending the power of the dominant geospatial database platform.

Projections and Coordinate Systems 
Oracle Spatial supports over 950 commonly used mapping coordinate systems and also will support user-defined coordinate systems.  It enables explicit map projection transformations of vector objects from one coordinate system to another. These transformations can be on a geometry-level basis or an entire layer (table) at a time. 

Linear Referencing Support 
Oracle Spatial now supports the storage of "measurement" information associated with a linear geometry. This feature is key to supporting linear networking applications such as Internet street routing, transportation, utility, telecommunications networks and pipeline management. 

Spatial Aggregates
SQL has long had aggregate functions, which are used to aggregate the results of a SQL query. Spatial aggregate functions operate on a set of geometries rather than just one or two geometries. An aggregate function performs a specified aggregate operation on a set of input geometries, and returns a single geometry object. For example, the following statement returns the minimum bounding rectangle of all the geometries in a table:

SELECT SDO_AGGR_MBR(c.shape)
  FROM cola_markets c;

Other supported aggregate functions include union, centroid, and convex hull; users can also define other aggregate functions. The use of spatial aggregates improves performance and simplifies coding.

GeoRaster Support - NEW with 10g
A new data type natively manages georeferenced raster imagery (satellite imagery, remotely sensed data, gridded data) in Oracle Database 10g. The GeoRaster feature of Oracle Spatial provides georeferencing of imagery; XML schema for metadata management; and basic operations like pyramiding, tiling, and interleaving. Applications in environmental management, defense/homeland security, energy exploration, and satellite image portals will benefit.

For more information about GeoRaster, please refer to separate white papers at http://otn.oracle.com/products/spatial.

Network Data Model - NEW with 10g
A data model is provided to store network (graph) structure in Oracle Database 10g. It explicitly stores and maintains connectivity of link-node networks and provides network analysis capability such as shortest path, connectivity analysis. Applications requiring network solutions include transportation, transit, utilities and life sciences (biochemical pathway analysis).

For transportation applications, the network data model also supports a routing feature. Oracle introduces a scalable routing engine that provides driving distances, times, and directions between addresses (or locations that have been geocoded in advance). It is provided as a Java client library to the network data model that can be easily deployed in either Oracle Application Server or standalone OC4J environments. Other features include: preference for either fastest or shortest routes, returning summary or detailed driving directions, and returning the time and distance along a street network from a single location to multiple destinations.

For more information about Oracle Spatial network data model, please refer to separate white papers at http://otn.oracle.com/products/spatial.

Topology Data Model - NEW with 10g
Oracle Spatial includes a data model and schema that persistently store topology in the Oracle Database. This is useful when there is a high degree of feature editing and a strong requirement for data integrity across maps and map layers. Another benefit is that topology-based queries typically perform faster for queries involving relationships such as adjacency, connectivity, and containment. Land management (cadastral) systems and spatial data providers benefit from these capabilities.

Spatial Analytic Functions - NEW with 10g
New server-based spatial analysis capabilities include classification, binning, association, and spatial correlation – essential for business intelligence applications.

Geocoder - NEW with 10g
Geocoding is the process of associating geographic references, such as addresses and postal codes, with location coordinates (longitude and latitude). With the Oracle Spatial option of Oracle Database 10g, a fully functional geocoding engine is provided. It provides international address standardization, geocoding and POI matching by querying geocoded data stored in Oracle database. Its unique unparsed address support adds great flexibility and convenience to customer applications. A PL/SQL API for geocoding is provided.

ORACLE APPLICATION SERVER MAPVIEWER
Application Server 10g includes a component called MapViewer. MapViewer is a Java-based visualization tool that uses location information from either Locator or Spatial to build and display maps in either a browser or in the context of a specific application. MapViewer can be used to:

• Create customized maps that show features such as roads, city areas, waterways and other transportation networks
• Display map themes such as national, state and local boundaries
• Visualize business data (e.g. population demographics, psycho-demographics, sales metrics etc.), to portray and explore relationships that can often best be expressed graphically as geographic maps
• Complement an applications workflow, providing interaction with mapped data
• Deliver custom maps over the Internet as a component of JDeveloper or as a standalone tool

Application Server 10g MapViewer is a J2EE component available with JDeveloper and OC4J. This component was developed to simplify the creation of applications that render and present location data as part of internet and wireless business applications. MapViewer provides a Java Client API and JSP Tag Libraries for application developers to embed map-rendering capability directly into existing e-business applications. Support for session control and basic viewing functions (map legend, select theme to view, etc.) are provided via the JSP Tag Libraries. More control of the image and the application interaction with the map is afforded through the Java Client APIs that support map interaction such as pan, zoom, locate, and re-center.

MapViewer saves money by reducing development time via tight integration with the JDeveloper environment. MapViewer increases the value of location data in Oracle Database by providing a tightly coupled tool to visualize these data. MapViewer improves applications summarizing complex business and geographic data and relationships in an easily understood, universally recognized format – a color map.

For more information about MapViewer including downloads and collateral, visit http://otn.oracle.com/products/mapviewer/ .

OPEN STANDARDS
Oracle consistently works to help shape, drive, implement and support the latest open standards in the spatial and location services areas. With the latest release, Oracle Spatial and Oracle Locator continue this commitment with the implementation of the OpenGIS Consortium Simple Features guidelines. Oracle is also committed to supporting the new OGC Geographic Markup Language (GML) as well as Open Location Service interfaces. The object-relational model used for geometry storage by Oracle Spatial and Oracle Locator also conforms to the specifications associated with SQL92 representation of points, lines, and polygons.

Oracle Locator, Oracle Spatial and Partners
Oracle Locator and Spatial are directly integrated with the leading GIS mapping and location services technology vendors. Partner products are not required to satisfy a formal certification process.  Any Oracle Spatial partner application that uses the features supported by Locator, as documented in this Data Sheet and in Appendix B of the Oracle Spatial User's Guide and Reference, will run.  Users should check with their application vendors to see whether their applications use only features supported by Locator. 

A list of partners is available at the Oracle Technology Network (OTN) at http://otn.oracle.com/products/spatial/spatial_partners.htm. 

Features Included with Locator
Following is a complete list of features supported by Oracle Locator.  Also included are chapter/section references to the Oracle Spatial User's Guide and Reference for further details on each feature.  If an Oracle Spatial feature is not listed here, it is not supported by Locator.

Locator features are also documented in Appendix B of the Oracle Spatial User's Guide and Reference.

Locator Feature	Described in (Chapter and section references are to Oracle Spatial User's Guide and Reference, 10g Release 1, unless otherwise specified)
Support for all geometry types: Points, point clusters, lines, line strings, compound line strings, polygons, polygons with holes, compound polygons, arc strings, circles, rectangles	Chapter 2
Support for 2D, 3D, and 4D data	Section 1.7
R-tree indexing; SQL statements for creating, altering, and deleting indexes	Section 1.7, Chapter 4, Chapter 10
All spatial operators - SDO_ANYINTERACT - SDO_CONTAINS - SDO_COVEREDBY - SDO_COVERS - SDO_EQUAL - SDO_FILTER - SDO_INSIDE - SDO_JOIN - SDO_NN - SDO_NN_DISTANCE - SDO_ON - SDO_OVERLAPBDYDISJOINT - SDO_OVERLAPBDYINTERSECT - SDO_OVERLAPS - SDO_RELATE - SDO_TOUCH - SDO_WITHIN_DISTANCE	Chapter 12
The following SDO_GEOM package functions and procedures: - SDO_GEOM.SDO_DISTANCE - SDO_GEOM.VALIDATE_GEOMETRY _WITH_CONTEXT - SDO_GEOM.VALIDATE_LAYER _WITH_CONTEXT	Chapter 13
Implicit coordinate system transformations for operator calls, where a query window needs to be converted to the coordinate system of the queried layer	Chapter 12
NEW for 10g! Minimum bounding rectangles supported for geodetic data	Section 6.2.3
Aggregate function to return minimum bounding rectangle of specified geometries: - SDO_AGGR_MBR	Chapter 14
Package (SDO_MIGRATE) to upgrade location data from previous releases to the current release	Chapter 17
Geodetic data support	Section 6.2 and Section 6.4
Function-based spatial indexing	Section 9.2
Object replication**	Oracle Database Advanced Replication
Table partitioning support for spatial indexes (including splitting, merging, and exchanging partitions and their indexes)°	Section 4.1.6 and Section 4.1.7
Parallel spatial index builds *	Chapter 10
NEW for 10g! Parallel spatial query *	Section 4.1.6
Graphical tool for creating and analyzing spatial indexes (Spatial Index Advisor integrated application in Oracle Enterprise Manager) ª	Online help for Oracle Enterprise Manager

* Not supported on Standard Edition
** Multimaster replication is only available on Enterprise Edition. Materialized view replication is available on both Standard and Enterprise Editions. For more information, refer to Oracle Database Advanced Replication.
° Requires Partitioning Option to Oracle Enterprise Edition.  Not supported on Standard Edition. 
ª  Part of the Oracle Enterprise Manager (Integrated Applications). Supported on both Standard and Enterprise Editions.

Features Included with Oracle Spatial Option Only (Not Included with Locator)
The following table summarizes the Oracle Spatial features not included with Locator. (The Oracle Spatial product includes all the functionality in Locator and the additional features listed below.)

Spatial Option Feature	Described in (Chapter and section references are to Oracle Spatial User's Guide and Reference, 10g Release 1, unless otherwise specified)
All spatial functions in SDO_GEOM package, except for those listed in the "Features Included with Locator" table above. Oracle Spatial includes functions for: - length/area calculations - buffer, centroid, convexhull - geometry intersection, union	Chapter 13
The five spatial aggregate functions below: - SDO_AGGR_CENTROID - SDO_AGGR_CONCAT_LINES - SDO_AGGR_CONVEXHULL - SDO_AGGR_LRS_CONCAT - SDO_AGGR_UNION	Chapter 14
Linear referencing system (LRS) support	Chapter 7 and Chapter 16
Coordinate systems support for explicit geometry and layer transformations - SDO_CS.TRANSFORM - SDO_CS.TRANSFORM_LAYER	Chapter 15
Set of tuning functions and procedures (SDO_TUNE package functions)	Chapter 18
Spatial utility package (SDO_UTIL package)	Chapter 19
NEW! Spatial Analytic Functions (SDO_SAM package)	Chapter 21
NEW! Geocoding support (SDO_GCDR package)	Chapter 5 and Chapter 20
NEW! GeoRaster support	Oracle Spatial GeoRaster
NEW! Topology Data Model	Part I, Oracle Spatial Topology and Network Data Models
NEW! Network Data Model (including routing engine)	Part II, Oracle Spatial Topology and Network Data Models

Summary
Oracle Locator brings core location functionality to every Oracle Database - without requiring costly third-party extensions. Locator supports workgroup to enterprise deployments, and is ideal for many service based applications (for example, location-based services or LBS).  It also allows organizations to use standard GIS partner tools to access the SDO_GEOMETRY type. Locator supports spatial object type storage, SQL access, R-tree spatial indexing, spatial operations, and geodetic data storage and management.

The Oracle Spatial option in Oracle Database 10g augments the Locator features with significant new capabilities that address the business-critical needs of customers in traditional GIS domains such as defense, homeland security, land management, transportation, as well as new areas such as life sciences.

Oracle Spatial with Oracle Database Enterprise Edition is the market leader for customers who need a high-end solution for complex GIS applications requiring advanced server-side spatial analysis and processing. With release 10g, Oracle Spatial provides significant new features that meet the business-critical needs of current and new customers. An open GeoRaster format supports the image processing requirements from the public sector, defense, and energy exploration domains. Network and topology data models meet the needs of applications in transportation, utilities, land management, life sciences, and location services. A server-side geocoder and spatial analysis functions are also provided for business applications.

Oracle is used in over 80-90% of enterprise spatial database management applications (IDC, Spatial Information Management: Competitive Analysis, 2002; Sonnen, Morris and Vesset, Dec. 2002). With Oracle Database 10g, Oracle Locator and Oracle Spatial advance to new levels of performance and include a rich feature set that makes it easy for any application developer to use Oracle to deploy GIS, eBusiness applications, and wireless location-based services.

KEY ENHANCEMENTS TO ORACLE LOCATOR WITH ORACLE DATABASE 10g NEW! Parallel spatial queries   NEW! Simplified relationship operators   NEW! Performance enhancements for spatial queries, R-tree index inserts and updates, and more  KEY ENHANCEMENTS TO ORACLE SPATIAL OPTION OF ORACLE DATABASE 10g NEW! GeoRaster support NEW! Topology data model NEW! Network data model NEW! Geocoder NEW! Spatial analytic functions For more information about Oracle Spatial GeoRaster support and network data model, please refer to separate technical white papers at http://otn.oracle.com/products/spatial . RELATED PRODUCTS AND SERVICES Oracle Application Server MapViewer is a Java map rendering and viewing component used for visualizing geospatial data managed by Oracle Locator or Oracle Spatial http://otn.oracle.com/products/mapviewer/ Oracle Workspace Manager provides long transaction support for Oracle Locator http://otn.oracle.com/products/workspace_mgr/   GETTING STARTED Technical information (documentation and white papers), software, samples, and technical forum are located on OTN http://otn.oracle.com/products/spatial/   Support information is located at - http://www.oracle.com/support (Oracle Support home) - http://www.oracle.com/support/metalink (Web support, including product alerts, logging Technical Assistance Requests online, and technical information including a technical spatial library) Take the Oracle University 3-day Instructor-Led Training course, Oracle Spatial. (Course covers both Locator and Spatial.) http://www.oracle.com/education/ From URL above, select country and click "go".  At US site, under Instructor-Led Training > Search for a class, enter "Spatial". Offered every 6-8 weeks in US; worldwide offerings also available.   Take the Oracle Learning Network self-paced eStudy course, Oracle Spatial (included in the Database Administrator Oracle Database Technology track). Course covers both Locator and Spatial. OLN is a subscription-based service; see OLN website for details. http://www.oracle.com/education/oln/ Take the Oracle By Example Online Developer Training http://otn.oracle.com/obe/ See Unit 2 - Manage Content in the Database > Module 1- Using Oracle Spatial to Perform Location-Based Analysis.

Top of Page |Copyright and Corporate Info

This product conforms to OpenGIS Simple Features Specification for SQL, Revision 1.0, Normalized Geometry Alternative. OpenGIS® is a trademark or registered trademark of the Open GIS Consortium, Inc. in the United States and other countries.