Podcast: Spatial Databases: A Commodity?

By Joe Francica and Adena Schutzberg
June 09, 2009

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This week's question: Is the spatial database a commodity? With all the big database players storing and querying spatial data and several open source offerings in the market, is spatial no longer special when in comes to the database world? Is it time to "stop getting excited" about the addition of spatial support and simply use the technology?

Show Notes

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SQL Server 2008 Spatial and Oracle (#1) by Regina, Paragon Corporation
Date: June 11, 2009 13:13 PM

Couple of comments:
SQL Server 2008 spatial support functions is the same regardless of whether you do standard, workgroup or enterprise.

If you get Oracle even Enterprise -- you only get Locator and its my understanding that Oracle Spatial is always an add-on but can only be added only to the Oracle Enterprise offering (at least that has been the case in the past). though I think this may have changed in the latest release or will change in the next release so you can buy the Oracle Spatial without having Oracle Enterprise.

My general opinion -- SQL Spatial is becoming commoditized. But commodization doesn't mean a provider does not make money off of it. It simply means they can't charge for the basic commoditized offering, but can charge for the add-ons like extended functions or speed enhancements such as ability to replicate and so forth and handle huge geometries.

If you don't offer the commodized piece of it (which I define to be things like what is defined in SQL/MM specs). You stand a high chance of losing your core customer base to another database provider.

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