With the development of digital maps such as OpenStreetMaps and Google Earth or Google Maps and other GIS systems many of the softwares need to processing geospatial data which are stores in databases. In the new version of the SQL Server 2008 R2 some new features to working with geographic data were introduced. First of all developers are able to work with two new datatypes which where implemented as a .NET common language runtime (CLR) data type: geography geometry These types support methods and properties that allow for the creation, comparison, analysis, and retrieval of spatial data. The difference between then is the geometry data type (called planar) supported by SQL Server conforms to the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Simple Features for SQL Specification while the geography data type (geodetic) stores ellipsoidal (round-earth) data, such as GPS latitude and longitude coordinates. After short theoretical introduction it`s time for implementation. First of...
Damian Zapart, Principal Engineering Manager @ Microsoft - official blog.