Title: Microsoft Spatial
Company: Microsoft
Description:: This workshop provides an in-depth look at both Microsoft SQL Server Spatial and Microsoft Virtual Earth products. Come see how the union of these two platforms illustrate the power of both geo-spatial querying and geo-data visualization within a single Microsoft solution.
SQL Server Spatial Support
SQL Server supports two spatial data types: the geometry data type and the geography data type. The geometry type represents data in a Euclidean (flat) coordinate system while the geography type represents data in a round-earth coordinate system.
Spatial data represents information about the physical location and shape of geometric objects. These objects can be point locations or more complex objects such as countries/regions, roads, or lakes1.
SQL Server spatial tools is a Microsoft sponsored open-source collection of tools for use with the spatial types in SQL Server. This project provides a set of reusable functions which applications can make use of. These functions may include data conversion routines, new transformations, aggregates, etc.
Bing Maps Spatial Data Support
The Bing Maps Spatial Data Services provide REST APIs that support batch geocode and store and query spatial data. You can use the Geocode Dataflow API to create dataflow jobs that geocode and reverse-geocode large sets of data.
