Oracle Spatial and Graph Enhancements

Oracle Spatial has been renamed Oracle Spatial and Graph. While Oracle Database has supported native graphs as a feature since the release of Oracle Spatial 10g, this change has been made to highlight the existing graph capabilities in Oracle Spatial and in recognition of the increasing market demand for graph database capabilities. Oracle Spatial and Graph includes Network Data Model (NDM) graphs used in traditional network applications in major transportation, telecommunications, utilities, and energy organizations. It also includes support for Resource Description

Framework (RDF) Semantic Graphs used in social networks and social interactions to address requirements from the media, finance, research, life sciences, pharmaceutical, and intelligence communities. These are proven, robust graph database technologies. The following sections describe enhancements to these Oracle Spatial and Graph capabilities.

1.10.1.1 Vector Performance Acceleration

Vector operations can be substantially improved by invoking new vector performance acceleration capabilities in Oracle Spatial and Graph. These result in improved index

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performance, enhanced geometry engine performance, optimized secondary filter optimizations for Spatial operators, and improved CPU and memory utilization for many advanced vector functions. Vector performance acceleration is especially beneficial when using Oracle Exadata Database Machine and other large-scale systems.

Oracle Spatial and Graph vector performance acceleration builds on general improvements available to all SDO_GEOMETRY operations in the following areas:

■ Caching of index metadata ■ Concurrent update mechanisms

■ Optimized spatial predicate selectivity and cost functions

These optimizations enable more efficient use of CPU, memory, and partitioning, resulting in substantial query performance improvements. For example, internal test results show up to 100 times faster query performance than with the previous release for non-geodetic point data and a polygon query window.

1.10.1.2 Spatial Routing Engine Enhancements

The Oracle Spatial and Graph routing engine supports truck-specific routing and logical turn restrictions. It computes drive times based on truck speed limits, which often differ from car speed limits. It also provides information on truck services such as weigh stations and truck stops along a route. Finally, it can handle logical turn restrictions involving more than two edges in the route geometry.

These enhancements yield more accurate results for logistics and truck routing applications.

1.10.1.3 Spatial Geocoder - Improved Asian Address Support Using Zones

The Oracle Spatial and Graph geocoder schema has been extended to provide an efficient storage model to support non-address range geocoding. It now supports geocoding by administrative level, or zone, in addition to the traditional method of geocoding using address ranges on road segments.

Traditional geocoding, which uses address ranges on road segments, is an efficient method for addresses in the United States and Western European countries. However, in Asian countries such as China, India and Japan, where addresses are not based on street segment ranges, a geocoding schema based on administrative levels or zones is much more efficient. The geocoder now supports this zone concept so that results for Asian countries are accurate at a greater granularity than the city level.

1.10.1.4 Spatial GeoRaster - Raster Algebra and Analytics

Oracle Spatial and Graph GeoRaster includes a new raster algebra language providing local algebraic function types and related raster operations. Coupled with PL/SQL, it enables expressing complex pixel query, value-based raster editing, mathematical

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Oracle Spatial and Graph Developer's Guide for details

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Spatial and Graph

operations, classification, and cartographic modeling over large numbers of rasters and images of unlimited size. These operations can be parallel-enabled to significantly improve performance.

You can develop cartographic modeling applications with the server-based raster analytic capabilities and a set of efficient I/O and cell manipulation utilities and programming interfaces. With the growing availability of raster data, you can realize performance and scalability benefits from moving the analytic processing to the database, as opposed to trying to perform analysis on client tools.

1.10.1.5 Spatial GeoRaster - Enhanced Image Processing

Oracle Spatial and Graph GeoRaster provides new image processing capabilities. These include image rectification, orthorectification, image stretching, image

segmentation, image update and appending, advanced mosaicking, large scale virtual mosaic, and on-the-fly spatial queries.

More image processing can now be handled in the server instead of the client, and some of them are parallelized. This enables improved performance of image

processing on a much larger scale, with larger data sets, which are increasingly being used in government and commercial applications as raster data becomes more available.

1.10.1.6 Spatial GeoRaster - Java API Enhancements

The Oracle Spatial and Graph GeoRaster Java API has been enhanced to support features such as ground control point (GCP) storage and manipulation, GCP georeferencing, reprojection, grid interpolations, and getCellValue. These features were previously supported only by the PL/SQL API.

With these enhancements, Java developers have more access to Oracle Spatial and Graph GeoRaster data management features.

1.10.1.7 Spatial GeoRaster - New Metadata Content

Oracle Spatial and Graph GeoRaster is enhanced to support relational raster data tables (RDTs) and to allow users to specify default alpha channel and pyramid level in its metadata. GeoRaster also adds a new resampling algorithm, supports resolution unit specification and parallel processing in many operations, and adds some new loading and exporting capabilities.

These new features improve GeoRaster data manageability, usability, security, and performance.

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Oracle Spatial and Graph GeoRaster Developer's Guide for details

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Oracle Spatial and Graph GeoRaster Developer's Guide for details

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Oracle Spatial and Graph Java API Reference for details

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Spatial and Graph