Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 7
Spatial Databases
7.1
Introduction
In this chapter, we take a look at spatial databases. A spatial database
allows us to store features, display them, or perform geoprocessing and
analysis through a rich set of spatial functions. Some of the advantages
of storing data in a spatial database are as follows:
• Attributes and geometry of features are stored together.
• Spatial indexing makes drawing faster at larger scales.
• Spatial queries provide the ability to explore features and their
relationships.
• You get better data management.
Structure of a Spatial Database
A spatial database is nothing more than a regular database with sup-
port for geometry data types. It typically contains functions to manipu-
late the geometries and perform spatial queries.
In a spatial database, a table represents a layer, a row is a feature, and
a spatial column contains the geometry of the feature.
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