Commercial Spatially-enabled databases
While we will be concentrating on the use of open source databases in this book, it is worth spending a moment exploring the commercial alternatives. There are two major commercial databases which support spatial operations: Oracle and Microsoft's SQL Server.
Oracle
Oracle provides one of the world's most powerful and popular commercial database systems. Spatial extensions to the Oracle database are available in two flavors. Oracle Spatial provides a large range of geospatial database features, including spatial data types, spatial indexes, the ability to perform spatial queries and joins, and a range of spatial functions. Oracle Spatial also supports linear referencing systems, spatial analysis, and data-mining functions, geocoding, and support for raster-format data.
While Oracle Spatial is only available for the Enterprise edition of the Oracle database, it is one of the most powerful spatially-enabled databases available anywhere.
A subset of the Oracle...
