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.
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