What's New in GeoRaster?

This section describes new and changed features of Oracle Spatial GeoRaster for Oracle Database 11g Release 1 (11.1).

Enhanced Ease of Use, Reliability, and Manageability

For the current release, GeoRaster automates certain tasks that previously needed to be performed manually, and it provides new administrative tools for users who need to perform specialized tasks.

• When you create a GeoRaster table, you no longer need to create the GeoRaster DML triggers for the table. These DML triggers are created automatically, and their automatic creation and operation provides greater reliability.

• Internal enhancements that monitor DDL events on raster tables and activities on GeoRaster system data improve the manageability, reliability, robustness, and usability of GeoRaster.

• The new SDO_GEOR_ADMIN PL/SQL package contains subprograms to retrieve information that may be useful and to help you manage and maintain GeoRaster databases, including performing migration and upgrade operations. The SDO_GEOR_ADMIN subprograms are documented in Chapter 5.

• Raster data versioning with Oracle Workspace Manager is supported, as explained in Section 3.18.

• Raster data row-level security with Oracle Label Security is supported, as explained in Section 3.18.

For more information about GeoRaster and database management, see Section 1.11.

New Metadata and Raster Support

The current release provides support for new GeoRaster metadata and raster types:

• A generic and complex functional fitting georeferencing model is supported for georeferencing rectified and unrectified airborne photos and satellite images. The affine transformation, DLT, RPC, and other models are supported as special cases of this generic model. For more information, see Section 1.6.

• Bitmap masks (special one-bit deep rectangular raster grids with each pixel having either the value of 0 or 1) can be stored for GeoRaster objects and individual bands or layers. These masks are stored inside the GeoRaster objects. Pyramids of masks can also be created and stored inside the GeoRaster objects. For more information about bitmap masks, see Section 1.8.

• Multiple NODATA values and multiple NODATA value ranges are supported for GeoRaster objects and their individual bands or layers. For more information, see Section 1.9.

• GeoRaster objects can have empty raster blocks to save storage space and improve processing speed. For more information, see Section 1.4.4.

• Random blocking size is supported. Although each block must still have the same size, the raster blocking sizes can be randomly different numbers along row and column dimensions, not necessarily a power of 2.

New Functions, Procedures, and Other Features

The current release provides many new subprograms and other enhancements related to the GeoRaster PL/SQL API and other features, including the following:

• Update, query, and other DML operations on the new georeferencing models, bitmap masks, and multiple NODATA values and value ranges are supported.

• Existing subprograms are enhanced to support empty raster blocks, random blocking sizes, and the new metadata.

• Mosaic support allows for gaps, overlaps, and missing source GeoRaster objects. For information about mosaic support, see the description of the SDO_GEOR.mosaic procedure in Chapter 4.

• The union or merging of GeoRaster objects and layers is supported. For information, see the description of the SDO_GEOR.mergeLayers procedure in Chapter 4.

• Partial edit and update on a window of raster data and its pyramids using another image or gridded data is supported. For information, see the description of the SDO_GEOR.updateRaster procedure in Chapter 4.

• New GeoRaster template functions are provided to facilitate third-party software integration. For more information, see Section 3.17.

• Statistical analysis and histogram generation are supported. For information, see the description of the SDO_GEOR.generateStatistics procedure in Chapter 4.

• Sub-cell or sub-pixel addressing (floating row and column numbers) is supported in the GeoRaster cell spaces, as explained in Section 1.3.

• A new constructor is added to the SDO_GEOR_SRS object type, as explained in Section 2.3.5.

• Calculation of the actual and nominal storage sizes of a GeoRaster object is supported. (The nominal size does not consider compression and sparse data.) For more information, see the sections about the SDO_GEOR_UTL.calcRasterStorageSize and SDO_GEOR_UTL.calcRasterNominalSize functions in Chapter 6.

• GeoRaster validation is enhanced to require that each valid GeoRaster object must be registered (with an entry in the ALL_SDO_GEOR_SYSDATA view), the raster data table name attribute of the GeoRaster object must not contain spaces, period separators, or mixed-case letters in a quoted string, and all the alphanumeric characters must be uppercase. For information about validating GeoRaster objects, see Section 3.4, which also refers to specific functions for performing validation.

• GeoRaster supports the use of SecureFile LOBs (SecureFiles) which were introduced in Release 11.1 to supplement the original BasicFile LOBs. For more information, see Section 3.1.2.

• GeoTiff, JPEG 2000, and Digital Globe RPC file formats are supported for loading and exporting GeoRaster objects. JPEG files can be loaded without decompression. For more information about the GeoRaster loader and exporter tools, see Section 1.13

• The GeoRaster viewer is enhanced to display masks, generic georeferencing models, empty raster blocks, and other features. For more information about the GeoRaster viewer tool, see Section 1.13.

The following table lists the new PL/SQL subprograms for this release. (It does not include existing subprograms that were significantly enhanced for this release.)