Alastair Aitchison is an independent developer, trainer, author and consultant specialising in spatial data reporting and analysis. His work has been used by the House of Lords, the police, political parties and various media agencies.
So you heard about the new spatial functionality in SQL Server 2008, rushed back to your database and added geography and geometry columns to all your tables, eager to create the next Google Earth-beating application. You then click the Execute button and wait.
And wait.
And wait some more. (You get the idea).
Spatial data is a rather unique beast, and designing efficient spatial queries requires specific techniques when compared to other, more traditional types of data.
In this session, we look at how the SQL Server database engine satisfies spatial queries, the theory behind spatial indexes, demonstrate the effects of altering the bounding box, use the spatial system DMVs and stored procedures to your spatial database
SQL Server spatial features have not yet made it into mainstream usage and many developers still ask "But *why* would I use them?". In this session, I hope to answer that question by replicating the functionality of Google Maps using only SQL Server.
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If you’ve ever tried to import spatial data (from an ESRI shapefile, say) into SQL Server, you’ve almost certainly encountered the dreaded “bigger than a hemisphere” error, as follows: Msg 6522, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 A .NET Framework … Continue reading →
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The old city of Königsberg, capital of East Prussia (now Kaliningrad), was built on either side of the river Pregel, with seven bridges across the river between four separate landmasses. A problem made famous by Swiss mathematician Leonard Euler is … Continue reading →
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(Click here for Puzzle #1 – the disappearing square) There seem to be several variations on this puzzle, but the version I know is as follows: “A hunter starts at a location. He walks one mile south, one mile east, … Continue reading →
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This is the first in what will (hopefully) be a series of posts demonstrating a few light-hearted uses of SQL Server 2008 spatial functions to solve some common mathematical/logical puzzles. To demonstrate the disappearing square puzzle, first of all create … Continue reading →
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Long time no post! The last few months have presented a number of changes for me, both personally and professionally speaking. In order to deal with them I had to enter a sort of “hibernation mode”, shutting down all non-essential … Continue reading →
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