IBM Makes Offer for Netezza

September 20, 2010 1 Comment

Nothing is final, but it looks like Netezza could be part of the IBM empire:

International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) agreed to acquire data specialist Netezza Corp. (NZ) in a deal valued at $1.7 billion, as Big Blue expands its analytics business.

….

Netezza provides technology that allows companies and government agencies to quickly analyze huge amounts of data–something IBM says will give it an advantage in its analytics business.

Netezza offers “a much simpler way to get started on analytics and data warehousing than anyone else in the industry,” said Arvind Krishna, IBM general manager for information management. He told Dow Jones Newswires Netezza’s system can be operated by one person instead of “an army of people” and that it provides increased performance at a lower cost.

Of course Netezza does spatial as well so it will be interesting to see what happens in this space with the IBM R&D behind it.

The big news tonight though is Hawaii Five-0 is back!

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SQL Azure Now Supports Spatial Types

June 29, 2010 Leave a Comment

Some good news out of Microsoft last week, SQL Azure now supports spatial types:

Spatial Data Support – SQL Azure now offers support for the Geography and Geometry types as well as spatial query support via T-SQL. This is a significant feature and now opens the Windows Azure Platform to support spatial and location aware applications.

Brilliant if you ask me!

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PostGIS in Action – The Book

May 11, 2009 8 Comments

Regina Obe and Leo Hsu have a great new book coming out called PostGIS in Action.  Looking at the table of contents reveals that this should be the book for learning how to use PostGIS in your GIS applications.  I’m really intersted in Chapter 13, “First look at WKT raster”.  Rasters seem to be pushing their way into my workflows so the more I can learn about it, the better I know I’ll be off.

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Netezza’s Spatial Extension to Data Warehouse Appliance

September 12, 2008 4 Comments

All Points Blog has the news that Netezza is set to release a “spatial extension” to their Data Warehouse Appliance.  You may  not think you know much about Netezza, but know that their success keeps Larry Ellison up at night.  There was some discussion on this blog about super fast geospatial analysis and what the target would be.  I think basically Netezza is trying to solve problems that we currently can’t do with existing spatial databases in both scale and speed.  I wouldn’t suspect seeing their product replacing Oracle Spatial or SQL Server, but for those who have the money to pay for the product this could help them answer questions they cannot do right now.  For most of us, just sit back and marvel at what you could do if money was no option and know that in a year or two, much of this technology will be in your hands.  Peter Batty says he’ll be blogging more about what exactly this means in the next week.  Can’t wait to read it.

This type of spatial analysis was only found on Star Trek

This is Star Trek quality spatial data analysis folks

Photo by paper or plastic?

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Microsoft Whitepaper – Introduction to Spatial Coordinate Systems: Flat Maps for a Round Planet

July 17, 2008 13 Comments

Isaac Kunen blog’s about the first spatial whitepaper Microsoft has released.

Introduction to Spatial Coordinate Systems: Flat Maps for a Round Planet

Says Isaac: “This paper is a bit of an odd duck: it isn’t SQL Server, or even Microsoft specific in any way. It’s just a little introduction to the use of spatial data.” Yea so it isn’t exactly new material for spatial folks, but hey it might come in handy one day and it is very well written. Definitely worth bookmarking.

Microsoft is new to the spatial world, so maybe they didnt get everything right.

Microsoft is new to the spatial world, so maybe they didn't get everything right.

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Microsoft turns the world right side up again

December 27, 2007 12 Comments

Thanks to Paul Ramsey, Bill Dollins, Morten Nielsen and others, Microsoft has said that they plan to implement longitude-latitude ordering in WKB and WKT for both the geography and geometry types. Bill put it best IMO as to why this change needed to happen with SQL Server 2008.

For me, the issue is consistency. Regardless of the mindsets of professionals vs. non-professionals or the imprecision of the OGC spec, the bottom line is that the same call behaves differently for two related data types.

Now sure it would have been possible to work around this, but it makes no sense for Microsoft to do things different from everyone else. Now I still see Microsoft using the GML example of axis order to justify their choice, but given that the standard is long/lat I can’t understand why they’d want to be different.

Now you know why folks such as Howard Butler were “unhappy” that Google named their blog Google LatLong rather than the more correct Google LongLat.


Man, this place looks expensive. I feel like I’m wasting a fortune just standing here.

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ArcGIS Server and ArcSDE (and even Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Spatial)

December 17, 2007 64 Comments

OK, so here is what is happening at 9.3 with ArcSDE.

  1. ArcSDE finally rides into the sunset. Even though technically ArcSDE has been replaced at 9.2, it was still a separate product. Now at 9.3 it will become fully integrated into ArcGIS Server. ArcGIS Server Enterprise will be the “traditional” ArcSDE level where ArcGIS Server supports an unlimited number of users via either direct connect or connection to an application server. It offers DBMS support for IBM DB2, IBM Informix, all editions of Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle and PostgreSQL. It has no data or memory limits. The Workgroup level of ArcGIS Server supports a maximum of 10 direct connect users. It includes an embedded DBMS (Microsoft SQL Server Express Spatial). It has a data limit of 4 GB and a memory limit of 1 GB.
  2. ArcGIS will connect to Microsoft SQL Server via direct connect. Out of the box ArcGIS application will be able to connect to Microsoft SQL Server Express Spatial, but if you want unlimited users, you’ll need to purchase ArcGIS Server Enterprise. This is probably less than what folks wanted, but you’ll have to sort that our yourselves.
  3. ArcGIS supports older versions of the Geodatabase. At 9.3, ArcGIS can connect and create geodatabases (personal, file) back to 9.0. This means you won’t need to keep older versions of the geodatabase around to share with others. You also won’t have to upgrade your geodatabases just because ArcGIS went to a new release. If you wish, you can keep your older geodatabases running at whatever release you wish (back to 9.0).
  4. SQL Server 2008 Spatial will be fully supported when Microsoft releases final version of SQL Server 2008. This might mean that SQL Server 2008 support might not show up until SP1 or SP2 for 9.3. It all depends on Microsoft’s release schedule.
  5. PostgreSQL support will be available at 9.3 as has been reported. There will be support for both the PostGIS and ESRI data types.
  6. ArcGIS Engine will allow developing with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express so you can scale down your enterprise applications to the workgroup level. You’ll no longer be limited to working with personal for file geodatabases.
  7. ArcGIS Server Enterprise will support 64bit processors. This is only the spatial database application server and not the AGS Basic, Standard and Advanced product.

So does that answer your questions about ESRI spatial database support at 9.3?

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ESRI to Support SQL Server 2008 Spatial

December 6, 2007 58 Comments

Good news for those who want to take advantage of SQL Server 2008 Spatial and ArcGIS.

ESRI’s ArcGIS 9.3 software, the next scheduled release of ESRI’s ArcGIS suite, will take full advantage of the new spatial technology in the upcoming release of SQL Server 2008. With the November SQL Server 2008 community technology preview (CTP), Microsoft Corporation is extending the use and value of spatial technology by integrating it directly within SQL Server at no additional cost.

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Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Spatial will be supported on free Express versions

November 20, 2007 45 Comments

I just got this tidbit of information from a friend who talked to Ed Katibah (lead Program Manager for SQL Spatial).

Spatial datatype, methods and indexes will be supported equally on all SQL Server editions (Express, Workgroup, Standard and Enterprise) at no extra charge. That means anyone who wants to use the SQL Server 2008 Spatial can download the free Express version and start working with spatial databases. Express will still have its limitations as it does now but you have to believe that this puts a huge damper on middleware producers that are targeting .NET developers (ArcSDE *cough*).

Just think, download SQL Server 2008 Express and perform geospatial operations in Virtual Earth or OpenLayers.


SQL Server Mechagodzilla pushes other Spatial Databases aside with ease

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MapDotNet Support for SQL Server 2008 Spatial

November 12, 2007 5 Comments

I’m sure many of us on the MapDotNet email list got the news that full support for SQL Server 2008 Spatial is right around the corner.

MapDotNet Server 6.5 is currently undergoing beta testing and will be released in November 2007. In addition to support for SQL Server 2008, it will provide support for the new features in Microsoft Virtual Earth 6.0, and will include upgraded map rendering capabilities, support for Windows Communication Foundation, profiling, event logging, and improved diagnostics.

Was there some sort of planned “event” for SQL Server 2008 today because both Manifold and Safe Software also announced SQL Server 2008 Spatial support.

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