What's New in Oracle Spatial?

This section describes major new and changed Oracle Spatial features for the current release.

3-D Geometry Support

Oracle Spatial supports the creation and storage of three-dimensional geometry objects, as explained in Section 1.11.

Enhanced Web Services Support: Business Directory, Web Feature Service, Catalog Services, and OpenLS

Expanded support is provided for spatial Web services. A Web service enables developers of Oracle Spatial applications to provide feature data and metadata to their application users over the Web. Chapter 10 introduces the support for Web services and includes some overall requirements and considerations. The following chapters document new features that are supported through Web services:

Routing Engine Enhancements

The routing engine includes the following enhancements:

Per-maneuver times and geometries
Long ID support
Edge ID support at both the route level and segment level
Better generation of driving directions

The routing engine is described in Chapter 13.

SQL Multimedia Types

Support for the SQL Multimedia spatial types (ST_xxx) has been enhanced. These types are specified in ISO 13249-3, Information technology - Database languages - SQL Multimedia and Application Packages - Part 3: Spatial. The Oracle Spatial support for these types is described in a new chapter (Chapter 3).

Annotation Text

Oracle Spatial now supports annotation text as specified in the OpenGIS Implementation Specification for Geographic information - Simple feature access - Part 1: Common architecture. This support is described in Section 3.4.

DEFAULT Geocoding Match Mode Equivalent to RELAX_POSTAL_CODE

The DEFAULT match mode for geocoding operations is now equivalent to the RELAX_POSTAL_CODE mode. In the previous release, it was equivalent to the RELAX_BASE_NAME mode. The match modes for geocoding operations are explained Section 11.1.2.

New MatchVector Attribute for SDO_GEOR_ADDR

MatchVector has been added as the last attribute for the SDO_GEO_ADDR object type. This attribute is a string that indicates how each address attribute has been matched against the data used for geocoding. The MatchVector attribute is listed in Table 11-6 and is explained more fully in Section 11.1.5.

SDO_GEOM.CLOSEST_POINTS Procedure

The new SDO_GEOM.SDO_CLOSEST_POINTS procedure (described in Chapter 24) computes the minimum distance between two geometries and the points (one on each geometry) that are the minimum distance apart.