{"id":759,"date":"2007-10-25T19:54:00","date_gmt":"2007-10-25T19:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"\/blogs\/bobb\/post\/Spatial-Data-a-niche-or-a-tool-for-the-masses.aspx"},"modified":"2007-10-25T19:54:00","modified_gmt":"2007-10-25T19:54:00","slug":"spatial-data-a-niche-or-a-tool-for-the-masses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/bobb\/spatial-data-a-niche-or-a-tool-for-the-masses\/","title":{"rendered":"Spatial Data, a niche or a tool for the masses?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\nI&#39;ll have to admit it, when I first saw that SQL Server 2008 was adding spatial data support, I thought of it as a niche. The province of geographers, cartographers, and maybe a few others. Complex, involving a lot of higher mathematics, each province having their own geographic encoding, and so on&#8230; And that level exists, to me it&#39;s the production of spatial reference data. When I think of spatial reference data, I think of map data you&#39;d buy from ESRI and data posted by government agencies. Or made available by utilities, so you don&#39;t hit a power cable while digging in your garden. As opposed to spatial line of business data.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nNow, before you go searching your LOB application for latitude and longitude columns, how about looking for columns that contain &quot;address&quot;. It&#39;s a short hop from address to lat\/long by using a geocoder. The one I used is the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/mappoint\/products\/webservice\/default.mspx\" class=\"broken_link\">MapPoint web service<\/a>. Now you have line-of-business spatial data. I&#39;ll bet every app has a field that contains address. And how about looking for the nearest salesperson for a potential customer? Or the nearest warehouse? Mapping programs like Virtual Earth, Google Earth, and Yahoo Maps&nbsp;can give you general business information and maps but how about encoding information in your own business?\n<\/p>\n<p>\nI&#39;m quite excitied over this upcoming &quot;niche&quot; feature and think it could make its way into each and every application. That&#39;s spatial data &quot;for the masses&quot; (so I&#39;m not the greatest at sloganizing, forgive me).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#39;ll have to admit it, when I first saw that SQL Server 2008 was adding spatial data support, I thought of it as a niche. The province of geographers, cartographers, and maybe a few others. Complex, involving a lot of higher mathematics, each province having their own geographic encoding, and so on&#8230; And that level [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sql-server-2008","category-sql-server-spatial"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.9.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Spatial Data, a niche or a tool for the masses? - Bob Beauchemin<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/bobb\/spatial-data-a-niche-or-a-tool-for-the-masses\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Spatial Data, a niche or a tool for the masses? - Bob Beauchemin\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I&#039;ll have to admit it, when I first saw that SQL Server 2008 was adding spatial data support, I thought of it as a niche. The province of geographers, cartographers, and maybe a few others. Complex, involving a lot of higher mathematics, each province having their own geographic encoding, and so on&#8230; And that level [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/bobb\/spatial-data-a-niche-or-a-tool-for-the-masses\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Bob Beauchemin\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-10-25T19:54:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Bob Beauchemin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Bob Beauchemin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/bobb\/spatial-data-a-niche-or-a-tool-for-the-masses\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/bobb\/spatial-data-a-niche-or-a-tool-for-the-masses\/\",\"name\":\"Spatial Data, a niche or a tool for the masses? - Bob Beauchemin\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/bobb\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2007-10-25T19:54:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2007-10-25T19:54:00+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/bobb\/#\/schema\/person\/62bfa986c5b5d28fcffd8b4fc409c73e\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/bobb\/spatial-data-a-niche-or-a-tool-for-the-masses\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/bobb\/spatial-data-a-niche-or-a-tool-for-the-masses\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/bobb\/spatial-data-a-niche-or-a-tool-for-the-masses\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/bobb\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"SQL Server 2008\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/bobb\/category\/sql-server-2008\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":3,\"name\":\"Spatial Data, a niche or a tool for the masses?\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/bobb\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/bobb\/\",\"name\":\"Bob Beauchemin\",\"description\":\"SQL Server Blog\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/bobb\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/bobb\/#\/schema\/person\/62bfa986c5b5d28fcffd8b4fc409c73e\",\"name\":\"Bob Beauchemin\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/bobb\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/6f80e6cc667410857fa6a21931dc528b8092f4d112bf7a8ff7c267674d44ee37?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/6f80e6cc667410857fa6a21931dc528b8092f4d112bf7a8ff7c267674d44ee37?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Bob Beauchemin\"},\"sameAs\":[\"http:\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/bobb\/\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/bobb\/author\/bobb\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Spatial Data, a niche or a tool for the masses? - Bob Beauchemin","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/bobb\/spatial-data-a-niche-or-a-tool-for-the-masses\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Spatial Data, a niche or a tool for the masses? - Bob Beauchemin","og_description":"I&#39;ll have to admit it, when I first saw that SQL Server 2008 was adding spatial data support, I thought of it as a niche. 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