SQL Server 2008 Finally RTM
August 6, 2008 39 Comments
Warning PR: Microsoft Releases SQL Server 2008
I was getting worried I’d have to use SQL Server 2005 on a project starting up, but this means 2008 will be the focus.
Chief Evangelist for WeoGeo.com
very good wonderfull
I hope this brings additional competition to the desktop GIS market. I wonder if the next version of Office will have a GIS viewer/editor component just like a word processor and spreadsheet.
MMS RFC 38 check it out….the future of enterprise GIS.
Can anyone comment on how hard it will be to migrate an existing SDE Geodatabase from SQL 2005 to SQL 2008 platform?
And what tools are out there to get a regular shape-file into 2008 ?
And what tools are out there to get a regular shape-file into 2008 ?
Manifold GIS can do this, and I believe FME will have some tools too. Finally, I’m sure there will be a bunch of free downloads that could do it too.
it is extremely easy to migrate a SQL 2005 instance to 2008. Now if you are implying changing the storage type from SDE BLOB to SQL spatial, that is a lot more involved. It will involved a similiar migration process that people had to go through to migrate SDE LONG RAW to ST_GEOMETRY.
Data Interoperability with 9.3 already supports 2008, but it will get updated to support 2008 RTM when the 9.3 SP comes out (very soon now) you will be able to bring shapefiles into SQL spatial columns.
There are reasons to use Manifold GIS with SQL Server, but as a data loader you are probably wasting your money.
http://www.sharpgis.net/page/SQL-Server-2008-Spatial-Tools.aspx
I’m not sure if Morton needs to update his code for RTM or not but I’ll find out when we get the “final” release.
Yes, thats right – sharpnet. That was the free stuff that I couldn’t remember what the name was. Thanks.
Really great free tool too. But, Manifold and FME would be money well spent if you wanted to do any kinds of coordinate transformations beforehand, or possible pre-processing of data.
As far as I can tell, my tool continues to run just fine on the RTM version.
can anyone tell me how to place a constraint on the spatial column so only one SRID can be used? It seems scary that you could populate the column with any SRID info. I feel this should have been included as a design property. Now granted it may be, I’m working with a real early CTP.
@JW
Yes. Here it is:
http://geobabble.wordpress.com/2007/11/26/spatial-references-in-sql-server-2008-part-2/
ok thanks. That is easy enough. I still think this should be a property you should be able to set when you design the column. Something as static as a spatial reference shouldnt be treated so non chalantly.
Just wanted to confirm that:
a) FME 2008 works just fine with the SQL Server 2008 RTM
b) Data Interop extension in 9.3 that shipped DID NOT include SQL Server 2008 Spatial support (but works fine with the non-spatial in SQL Server 2008)
c) There is a very very good chance that SQL Server 2008 spatial will be part of 9.3 SP1, and a 100% chance it will be there for 9.3 SP2.
Lastly, Johannes posted a good story of using SQL Server Spatial, FME, and Virtual Earth together in an interesting way over on his blog at
http://tinyurl.com/59mla3
that some of you might find interesting.
Dale
Regarding…
Trivial, if what you mean is moving your data from SDE into SQL Server 2008 native.
Link the SDE data source into your project and open it. Choose File – Export to send it into your SQL Server 2008 data source and you’re done.
Ah… one more step: Break out the drinks and celebrate freeing your data from the horribly obsolete SDE silo. Feel smarter, accept the congratulations of your friends and beam with self confidence when your girlfriend asks you if you’ve lost weight or have been working out…
If you have zillions of drawings in SDE (I feel your pain…) you could, of course, automate this with a script.
zillions of “drawings” in SDE…?
Your CAD is showing.
And I’m not so certain that migrating your data from an SDE blob to a SQL column managed by SDE is breaking out of the silo. SDE will still freak out if you do anything behind the scenes since those changes won’t be “registered” with the SDE mothership.
Truly breaking out of the SDE silo would be creating a new table from scratch with a spatial object and all of the attribute columns from the SDE FC, exporting the geometries to a shapefile (with a FK to join back later) import shapefile via sharpmap, join back to SDE business table and pull the attributes across. THEN, serve the resultant dataset to ArcGIS using FME or MS4W WMS/WFS. Keeps SDE from even touching the table and you can manipulate it all you want without SDE complaining and creating all of its stupid GDB_ maintenance tables
Aren’t those the same tables that allow me to support versioned editing and distributed DBs without having to know squat about my DB administration?
true, if you plan on editing those tables with an ArcGIS client you will need an ArcGIS Server Basic licence on top of those databases.
Fortunately I don’t fall into that category and can generate and update FCs outside of an ArcGIS client.
I should have been more clear. My response was for “moving your data from SDE into SQL Server 2008 native” … the emphasis being on “native” as in using SQL Server 2008 native spatial types directly without needing the dead albatross of SDE around your neck.
One of the key benefits of having a modern spatial DBMS, such as Oracle or, now, SQL Server 2008, is being able to use the spatial DBMS’s own native spatial types and spatial infrastructure in direct connections from an equally modern client. That frees you from the SDE silo because it enables any application that respects the DBMS’s standards to work with that data by connecting directly to the DBMS.
Modern spatial software can, of course, connect directly to spatial DBMS with no need of Rube Goldberg middleware like SDE.
well see that’s still the problem. If you still have SDE on top of the tables in the RDBMS it is not freeing “you from the SDE silo” to enable “any application that respects the DBMSs standards”
The day I can make schema changes and add rows to the SDE managed table wthout SDE freaking out is the day I’ll say we are free from the SDE silo.
We are getting close.
We’re talking past each other. You’re assuming someone still has SDE on top of the tables. My point is that once you have a real spatial DBMS like SQL Server 2008 there is *no need* for SDE if you are running modern software.
It’s true that if you are running some horribly old-fashioned client that for no good reason *requires* you to use SDE you are stuck in the SDE silo. But that’s not SQL Server 2008′s fault – it’s your choice of an old fashioned client that keeps you stuck in the SDE silo.
If your GIS client software vendor doesn’t know how to connect directly to a modern, mainstream spatial DBMS like SQL Server 2008 without requiring a layer of living fossil middleware like SDE, get rid of them and choose a vendor who can.
ArcGIS can connect to SQL Server 2008 without ArcSDE middleware, just needs an ArcSDE license.
Is this still the case where all is needed is access to an arcsde license? All I have been able to find is that ESRI is now requiring ArcServer renamed from SDE IMO.. Someday hopefully someone will put enough pressure on ESRI to once and for all get rid of the need for some type of middleware. If topological rules are the reason for this then someone needs to write some constraints/triggers withing the database to handle them. Dreaming I know.
So ESRI says to the customer, “You don’t have to use my software to do the job, just pay me for it, and you’re good to go.”?
James, I just want to make sure I understand correctly. The “direct connect” hype with ArcGIS 9.3 and SQL Server 2008 is still dependent on SDE? I can’t connect to spatial data in SQL 2008 with ArcGIS desktop alone, I need to have a SDE license?
How does this work? Would I need to connect through SDE (not using any of the management features in SDE), or does ArcGIS look for and consume an SDE connection/user license, then connect directly to SQL Server 2008 spatial data?
J: “You don’t have to use my software to do the job, just pay me for it, and you’re good to go.â€
And that way nobody ever needs to worry about software upgrades again – just buy the new licence.
I suspect the idea of paying for a middleware license that is completely unnecessary from a technical standpoint doesn’t sit well with most people. That’s why I hope SQL Server Spatial, and the attention it will bring to spatial databases, will bring new vendors to the desktop GIS market.
Tim: “I hope SQL Server Spatial … will bring new vendors to the desktop GIS market.”
Me too, but why aren’t they there already? Other enterprise-level spatial databases already exist, apart from SQLServer. Why is everyone waiting for Microsoft, even if ESRI-land does seem to be dominated by Microsoft tech?
Chris,
I’m not sure if it’s a factor of everyone waiting for Microsoft so much as MS adding spatial capabilities to their flagship RDBMS will increase awareness of spatial databases. MS has a big interest in promoting SQL Server’s new spatial capabilities to increase awareness and sales of Virtual Earth. One half of the equation will be tools that allow users to quickly publish spatial data from SQL Server. The other half will be the tools to load and manage that data in the first place. I don’t think we’ll see a bunch of software programs with the full capabilities of an ArcInfo license, but I do hope that we see some products with ArcView license capability – with the ability to connect to a RDBMS-based GeoDatabase – within the next couple of years.
Tim Maddle,
there is already a product that does what you say: its called Manifold. It is $395 – much cheaper than ArcView.
That said, it would be good to see Manifold get aggressive and allow their “Personal Version” ($245) to connect to SQLServer. Although, I’m sure that would make Oracle and IBM mad
@bob: I’m looking for a GIS package I can continue to learn/practice with at home after I finish my MSc in GIS this autumn, so Manifold sounds like it could be an economic option.
But do you know how many people are actually using it in the real world? Or would I just be learning the equivalent of Esperanto – a fine idea in principle but nobody actually uses it?
Slightly off topic, I know, but there isn’t much information around about Manifold, except for the company’s own website. And Dmitri’s ever-informative posts here, of course!
ChrisW, I don’t believe Manifold publishes sales data, but a careful perusal of their forum shows that there are a lot of international users. I believe I read a Phillipines governmental agency adopted Manifold as their GIS software of choice. There also appears to be a large group of European users, user conferences in the UK, etc. I am a user, and within the last two months I have shown some colleagues what it can do, and they have purchased a copy and are using it in their jobs.
I believe Manifold’s market is the world at large, not just large engineering/gis shops and US governmental agencies, which ESRI has sewn up for now. They say they see a bigger market with $395 per copy compared to $15,000+ per copy.
@J: Thanks for the info. I reckon $395 isn’t too bad a price to find out if all the pro-Manifold comments around the web (many of them written by Manifold workers it seems) are actually justified. And there’s always the 30-day get-out clause if I don’t like it.
But after reading some of the essays and stuff on their website, I wonder if maybe they should change the product’s name to “Manifesto” …
@ChrisW: It seems that Manifold also has a fairly good user base in Canada and northeastern US. Don’t be fooled by the price, it has a lot to offer. But if your used to ArcGIS, there will be a bit of a learning curve.
I’ve used it for about 4 years, ESRI products for about 20 yrs., and AutoCad Map for about 7 yrs. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, but I must say that I really enjoy working with Manifold (most of the time).
The direct connect to spatial data bases is great. I’m going to be testing working with the three GIS packages mentioned above and PostGIS over the next month (ArcGIS using ZigGIS 2.0). It would really be nice if the same was possible with SQL Server 2008.
Manifold has included direct connect for SQL Server 2008 spatial GEOMETRY and GEOGRAPHY since July, 2007, seamlessly along with direct spatial DBMS connection for Oracle (both ordinary Oracle with Locator for SDO_GEOMETRY as well as for Oracle Spatial for SDO_GEOMETRY and GeoRasters, in both cases using Oracle’s own Oracle Call Interface, OCI), IBM DB2 with Spatial Extender, PostgreSQL/PostGIS spatial, Manifold’s own spatial extender for SQL Server 2005 (a bridge product we created to help out the SQL Server user base until 2008 was released), and even generic Manifold spatial DBMS storage using “open” types such as OGC WKB for just about any spatial DBMS that supports binary storage, such as MySQL or (not that I’d recommend it… ) even things like Access. Oh, yeah, there is also the SDE and Personal geodatabase read/write/link/edit support for folks trying to climb out of that ESRI silo.
All the above can be mixed. For example, you could open a Manifold project and copy and paste from Oracle Spatial or Geodatabase directly into SQL Server 2008 spatial storage. You can store images and surfaces with automated tiling and reassembly into SQL Server 2008 (which has no spatial raster storage capability equivalent to Oracle Spatial’s Georaster) using Manifold’s generic spatial DBMS mechanisms even as you store vector geometry using SQL Server 2008′s intrinsic spatial storage types for vector geometry within the same DBMS server.
All that has run as fully 64-bit, multicore DBMS product since July 2007. We actually put full support for SQL Server 2008 into shipping, production Manifold in July, 2007, even before Microsoft published the first public beta (they use the word “CTP”) later in 2007. That was done so that Microsoft partners who wanted to develop stuff for SQL Server 2008 could do so confidentially without us and Microsoft having to jump through hoops involving multiple parties in non-disclosure agreements. I grant you that support for an unreleased (and for awhile not even officially announced) Microsoft product within a shipping Manifold product was a bit unusual, but it made it possible for any confidential partner of Microsoft to begin work with SQL Server 2008 spatial by simply buying an off-the-shelf copy of Manifold and having at it.
Microsoft has had several CTPs since July 2007 and has recently done the RTM. During the past year they’ve made significant changes in the product, most recently flipping the initially backwards coordinate order in GEOGRAPHY type around to use industry standard ordering. Manifold has had to issue a few updates to support those changes during the last year, most recently about a week ago. Manifold users are now by far the largest base of GIS users of SQL Server 2008 – not a very surprising result since we were the only GIS available for SQL Server 2008 for a year and are still the only fully 64-bit, multicore GIS environment from desktop to enterprise that exists for SQL Server 2008 (bigtime spatial DBMS users tend to care about performance so you don’t usually see them working with obsolete 32-bit products). ESRI has announced some 64-bit product but that’s only part of their line and not the full stack.
For the last 13 months, it has been Manifold and only Manifold that supported SQL Server 2008 with a fully mature, no excuses, personal, professional and enterprise GIS of dramatically greater breadth and depth than, say, the ArcGIS suite or ArcInfo or whatever ESRI living fossil one cares to name. And Manifold has done so with true 64-bit operation in each and every aspect of Manifold, from desktop clients connecting thousands at a time to enterprise sites for simultaneous AOI editing of SQL Server data, through the data access stack for spatial DBMS use to IMS publication through the web using HTML, WFS-T, WMS or tile servers. That’s been the case for multicore processors, Vista x64 and even Windows Server 2008 x64 on the day Microsoft released it. Last but not least, only Manifold delivers the phenomenal supercomputer performance made possible using massively parallel stream processing as can be acomplished with a $150 NVIDIA card through technologies like CUDA. To see examples of that in action, see the videos on the Manifold web site.
For the above it is $445 a seat for the Enterprise x64 product (only $395 for the 32-bit version), with quantity discounts beginning at 20% off at five seats. ESRI users seem to like that proposition. See comments at
http://www.manifold.net/info/testimonials.shtml
@RSF: Thanks for the tips.
“if you’re used to ArcGIS, there will be a bit of a learning curve…”
Anyway, at this stage I reckon anything I can learn about how to do different things with different GIS tools is going to be useful.
As a newbie, I’m not that used to anything, so the learning curve is going to be much the same, whichever tool I pick
“The direct connect to spatial data bases is great…”
Yes, that’s one of the areas I’m interested in looking at, as an ex-database programmer.
Just ordered Manifold Enterprise, so I’m looking forward to playing with the new toys.
Mmmm…lovely Kool-Aid…
@ChrisW: The DB side of things is where Manifold does a very good job (you can even use spatial sql to query image data), so you should quite happy with it. Plus you’ll be able to have fun going from the Manifold/Graphic GIS front end to pure spatial DB manipulation and compare the two.
If you want a quick start with Manifold there are some great training materials at:
http://www.gisadvisor.com/
Good Luck and enjoy the Kool-Aid!
@James: Sorry for detouring your blog, I still wish ESRI would give us direct connect to spatial databases in ArcGIS without the ArcGIS Server/SDE middle ware. I know, SDE does provide a lot of advanced management functions for the spatial data, but even a read only connection would be a big plus!
Is there aby tool to convert SQL server spatial database to Sharp files?
I use SqlSpatialTools (http://www.sharpgis.net/page/SQL-Server-2008-Spatial-Tools.aspx) to convert sharp files to SQL server 2008 database. Now i want to reconvert.
There is “Export result to sharp file” in this tool doesn’t work (beta).
thanks.