Microsoft have released a Community Technology Preview (CTP) of the new SQL Server release, code-named “Denali”, and a whitepaper detailing the new features.
Some of the highlights:
- New aggregate functions UnionAggregate, EnvelopeAggregate, CollectionAggregate and ConvexHullAggregate for all geometries in a table.
- Improved spatial index for point data, which allows for much faster “nearest neighbours” and similar spatial searches.
- Persisted computed columns, which would allow the creation of a GEOMETRY column that is calculated from other fields. Think EAST, NORTH floating point values, and a point geometry automatically maintained by the SQL engine!
Unfortunately, no mention of whether the intolerance for invalid geometries (and the need for “safe” spatial queries in GGP) will be fixed.
Links:
Read more: microsoft, sql-server
