Spatial linear referencing is an 8.1.6 beta feature that associates attributes or events with locations or portions of a linear feature using only one parameter (usually known as measure) instead of two (such as latitude/longitude or x/y in Cartesian space). It also references and dynamically creates sections of a linear feature by indicating the start and end locations along the feature without explicitly storing them. This feature is key to supporting linear networking applications in areas such as transportation, utility networks, and Internet street routing.

The LRS example procedure is discussed in Section 1.4 of the Oracle Spatial Linear Referencing System User's Guide and does the following:

• Creates a table to hold the segment
• Inserts the definition of the highway into the table
• Inserts the necessary metadata into the USER_SDO_GEOM_METADATA view
• Uses PL/SQL and SQL statements to define the segment and perform operations on it

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The LRS example procedure uses the road that is illustrated in the following figure.

In the preceding figure, the highway (Route 1) starts at point 2,2 and ends at point 5,14, follows the path shown, and has six entrance-exit points (Exit 1 through Exit 6). For simplicity, each unit on the graph represents one unit of measure, and thus the measure from start to end is 27 (the segment from Exit 5 to Exit 6 being the hypotenuse of a 3-4-5 right triangle).