Re: Oracle Spatial Options and Data Warehouse
Date: 1996/10/17
Message-ID: <slrn56dhq9.bb2.cbbrowne_at_wolfe.brownes.org>#1/1
On Thu, 17 Oct 1996 15:10:44 +0100, Ronan Miles <milesr_at_entcf2.agw.bt.co.uk> posted:
>Oracle Spatial Data option supports many (around 32?) dimensions.
>
>These can be enumerated values for a variety of things and hence it can
>be used for more than just geographic data. One can envisage dimensions
>of 'Diseases','Treatments','Demographics','Survivability', etc. However,
>it may be a leap of faith to start exploiting this stuff.
It of course begs the question "why?"
The reason for spatial data to be interesting is because it allows joint operations between the dimensions, particularly in calculating distances.
Spatial relationships are useful for creating queries like:
- Sort the database of customers in order of distances from the depot on 5th
St.
- Find all shipments that are going to locations within 25 miles of
Minneapolis.
You can't do that via a simple query in SQL with a table where the location is merely stored in "non-spatial" fields.
Putting other kinds of values into "spatial" fields could be somehow useful, but the sorts of things you're suggesting really are getting into OLAP/multidimensional analysis, as opposed to anything that's actually spatial in nature.
-- Christopher B. Browne, cbbrowne_at_unicomp.net, chris_browne_at_sdt.com Web: http://www.conline.com/~cbbrowne SAP Basis Consultant, UNIX Guy Windows NT - How to make a 100 MIPS Linux workstation perform like an 8 MHz 286Received on Thu Oct 17 1996 - 00:00:00 CEST