Online Spatial Database Clouds - SQL Azure

Online Spatial Database Clouds - SQL Azure
(spatial database support coming due to demand of user feedback)


Using a Spatial database (SQL Azure) to find Gas (petrol) Stations along a route.
New Functionality - Azure Spatial Database Support using cloud computing related topic - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL_Azure


Last Wednesday (March 17th), Dave Robinson of the SQL Azure Team announced upcoming support for spatial data in SQL Azure. You can view the announcement at the MIX Conference in the video of Dave’s presentation, Building Web Applications with Microsoft SQL Azure (go to 18:40 on the timeline for the start of the spatial data portion of his talk).

Spatial buffering a polyline - but across the web (not local database) - Windows SQL Azure will have spatial capabilities - to be released April 2010.

"SQL Azure provides a highly available and scalable relational database engine in the cloud. In this demo-intensive and interactive session, learn how to quickly build web applications with SQL Azure Databases and familiar web technologies. We demonstrate how you can quickly provision, build and populate a new SQL Azure database directly from your web browser. Also, see firsthand several new enhancements we are adding to SQL Azure based on the feedback we’ve received from the community since launching the service earlier this year."

This uses the same technology as Microsoft SQL 2008 Server
basically it supports latitude and longitude.

A "Flat Earth" (GEOMETRY or planar) data type represents geospatial data which has been projected from its native, spherical, coordinate system into a plane.
A "Round Earth" data type (GEOGRAPHY) uses an ellipsoidal model in which the Earth is defined as a single continuous entity.

source:
Video
http://live.visitmix.com/MIX10/Sessions/SVC07 (46.45) jump to 18.36if have no time.

Related blog
http://blogs.msdn.com/edkatibah/archive/2010/03/21/spatial-data-support-coming-to-sql-azure.aspx

SQL Azure Labs
http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlazure/archive/2010/03/19/9981936.aspx

Sliverlight Map - Editor with Exporter

Sliverlight Map - Editor with Exporter


Idvsolutions.com have produced a neat Virtual Earth based mapping editor that allows a user to create point,line and polygon overlays, all three have attributes attached and can be exported to KML (Google Earth) or SQL Server 2008 formats.

SQL 2008 output for the Features above:

CREATE TABLE VisualFusionShapes (fid int IDENTITY (1,1), title nvarchar(120), description nvarchar(500), geo geometry);
INSERT INTO VisualFusionShapes (title, description, geo) VALUES ('Georgia', '', geometry::STGeomFromText('POLYGON((39.919084 43.463258,40.358537 43.622528,41.017717 43.542946,41.347306 43.399432,41.632951 43.303566,42.138322 43.287574,42.445939 43.287574,42.731584 43.207550,43.434709 42.918592,43.632463 42.757471,43.720353 42.595930,44.225724 42.725196,44.511369 42.805851,44.972795 42.805851,45.456193 42.628272,45.719865 42.482602,45.697892 42.125089,46.269181 41.978249,46.510881 41.880166,46.269181 41.732761,46.379045 41.486331,46.620744 41.436932,46.686662 41.288510,46.488908 41.156295,46.313127 41.238960,45.631974 41.354517,45.236467 41.371008,44.621232 41.222436,44.159806 41.222436,43.764299 41.172836,43.368791 41.172836,42.995256 41.420457,42.819474 41.585016,42.599748 41.634302,42.511857 41.535692,42.094377 41.535692,41.567033 41.535692,41.742814 41.798316,41.654924 42.157674,41.545060 42.466395,41.457170 42.660597,41.281388 42.773602,41.017717 42.821970,40.973771 43.031126,40.446427 43.239572,39.919084 43.463258))', 0));
INSERT INTO VisualFusionShapes (title, description, geo) VALUES ('Area of Interest', '', geometry::STGeomFromText('LINESTRING(37.414201 46.606405,50.422013 46.636587,50.465959 39.827914,37.502092 39.811038,37.414201 46.591307)', 0));
INSERT INTO VisualFusionShapes (title, description, geo) VALUES ('Icon', '', geometry::STGeomFromText('POINT(317.461308 186.55787)', 0));

Loads straight into SQL 2008 Server.

Required is Sliverlight 2
Google Earth or SQL Server 2008 to import the exported files

Bug? Not Sure if this is a bug but when a polygon is created and then the user wants to place a point on top the polygon the polygon becomes editable and no point is placed.

Suggestions
Annotation (Text not attached to any specific geometry)
Predefined Shapes (Circle, Rectangle, Triangle geometry)
Clicking on the edges allows the move the shape
Export to other formats GPX,XML etc.

More information is available
http://idvux.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!2EB6AAF6C3AC1EBE!980.entry


US Demographics Visualizer is also a very good thematic map generator for US Census data.

http://demo.idvsolutions.com/apps/censusdemo/flash/map.html