SQL Server "Katmai" com suporte espacial

Foi divulgado na Microsoft Business Intelligence Conference que a nova versão do SQL Server 2008, apelidado de "Katmai", terá suporte nativo às feições espaciais (geográficas).

Scheduled to ship in 2008, Katmai will be the first version of SQL Server to support spatial data and operations natively. Pretty cool! Finally, support for Spatial as a first class data type with indexing.

O tipo de dado geográfico armazenado no SQL Server 2008 será compatível com o estelecido pelo consórcio Open Geospatial (OGC) e a especificação Simple Features for SQL. Além disso o Katmai terá o suporte a aproximadamente 70 métodos/funções.

There are Community Preview and early alpha builds being tested outside of Microsoft right now, but if you aren't testing there is limited information that has been made public. Here are a few bullets that are OK to share at this point:

• Spatial will be supported in the next release of SQL Server (code named Katmai) as system data types
• Katmai is scheduled to ship in 2008 and will most likely be called SQL Server 2008
• Katmai spatial will support two models: a “Flat Earth” planar data type and a “Round Earth” geodetic data type
• The Flat Earth data type (GEOMETRY) will support the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Simple Features for SQL Specification with support for approximately 70 spatial methods/functions
• There will be spatial indexes for both planar and geodetic data types