This preface contains:
The following are changes in Oracle Spatial and Graph Developer's Guide for Oracle Database 12c Release 1 (12.1.0.2).
The information for the Spatial and Graph routing engine (often referred to as the routing engine) has been substantially updated and reorganized. It appears in the following locations:
Chapter 13, "Routing Engine" describes concepts and techniques relevant to all users of the routing engine.
Appendix E, "Routing Engine Administration" is for advanced users who need to administer the routing engine. It is not intended for most routing users. (It assumes that you are already familiar with the material in Chapter 13.)
For SDO_GEOM.SDO_CLOSEST_POINTS, if the distance between the two points is 0 (zero), the output geometries (geoma and geomb) was null in the previous release. Now, the output geometries depend on whether the input geometries are two-dimensional or three-dimensional, as explained in the Usage Notes for that procedure.
By default the GeoRaster feature is disabled after the Oracle Spatial and Graph is initially installed. To enable GeoRaster, follow these steps:
Connect to the database as SYS AS SYSDBA.
Enter the following statement:
EXECUTE MDSYS.enableGeoRaster;
For more information, see Section A.2, "Ensuring That GeoRaster Works Properly After an Installation or Upgrade"
The following are changes in Oracle Spatial and Graph Developer's Guide for Oracle Database 12c Release 1 (12.1.0.1).
The following features are new in this release:
Effective with Oracle Database Release 12.1.0.2, the following new subprograms have been added to the SDO_GEOM package, which is documented in Chapter 23:
Support for non-uniform rational B-spline (NURBS) curve geometries is included in this release. NURBS curves allow representation of free-form shapes with arbitrary shapes. NURBS representation allows control over the shape of the curve because control points and knots guide the shape of the curve, and they allow complex shapes to be represented with little data.
For more information, see Section 1.13, "NURBS Curve Support in Oracle Spatial and Graph".
In the previous release, height information was ignored for certain operations on three-dimensional geodetic geometries. With this release, the height is approximated and included in calculations for these operations.
For more information, see Section 1.11, "Three-Dimensional Spatial Objects", including Table 1-2, "How Geodetic 3D Calculations Are Performed".
ALL_SDO_xxx and USER_SDO_xxx metadata views have been added for 3D themes, scenes, and viewframes. For descriptions of these views, see Section 2.9, "Other Spatial Metadata Views".
These views are relevant to several new functions listed under "New and Changed SDO_UTIL Subprograms".
The following new spatial aggregate function has been added (spatial aggregate functions are documented in Chapter 19):
The following new subprograms have been added to the SDO_CS package, which is documented in Chapter 20:
The following new subprogram has been added to the SDO_GEOM package, which is documented in Chapter 23:
The following new subprograms have been added to the SDO_PC_PKG package, which is documented in Chapter 27:
The following significant changes have also been made:
For SDO_PC_PKG.CLIP_PC, the include_custom_dims parameter can be used to return point cloud blocks that contain custom dimensions in addition to regular dimensions.
For SDO_PC_PKG.INIT, the pc_other_attrs parameter can be used to specify metadata for point cloud pyramiding.
The following new subprograms have been added to the SDO_TIN_PKG package, which is documented in Chapter 29:
The following significant changes have also been made:
For SDO_TIN_PKG.INIT, the tin_other_attrs parameter can be used to specify metadata for TIN pyramiding.
The following new subprograms have been added to the SDO_UTIL package, which is documented in Chapter 31:
The following significant changes have also been made:
SDO_UTIL.AFFINETRANSFORMS has default values for all parameters except the first (geometry). This can simplify coding when you need to specify nondefault values for only a few parameters.
SDO_UTIL.CIRCLE_POLYGON has an additional format that includes the start_azimuth and end_azimuth parameters.
SDO_UTIL.SIMPLIFY has the new optional parameter remove_loops, which enables you to ensure that a simplified line string geometry for not contain any self-crossing loops in the middle. (SDO_UTIL.SIMPLIFYVW also has the remove_loops parameter.)
SDO_GEOM_MBR is a SQL operator that is functionally identical to the SDO_GEOM.SDO_MBR function, but provides better performance.
For SDO_GEOM_MBR operator usage information and an example, see the SDO_GEOM.SDO_MBR function reference section.
The new SDO_POINTINPOLYGON operator (technically a table function takes a set of rows whose first column is a point's x-coordinate value and the second column is a point's y-coordinate value, and returns those rows that are within a specified polygon geometry.
To accelerate the performance of spatial operators, it is recommended that you enable the Vector Performance Accelerator (VPA) feature by setting the SPATIAL_VECTOR_ACCELERATION database system parameter to the value TRUE. (This feature and associated system parameter are authorized for use only by licensed Oracle Spatial and Graph users, and the default value for the parameter is FALSE.) You can set this parameter for the whole system or for a single session.
For more information, see Section 1.19, "SPATIAL_VECTOR_ACCELERATION System Parameter".
The following other changes have been made in this book:
The product name has been changed from Oracle Spatial to Oracle Spatial and Graph, also referred to as Spatial and Graph.
The section previously titled "SDO_AGGR_UNION Example" in Appendix C, "Complex Spatial Queries: Examples" has been deleted. That section had recommended: "For better performance when aggregating many rows, break your aggregation into groupings so that each is always 50 geometries or fewer." However, because of enhancements to SDO_AGGR_UNION effective with Release 12.1, if you are using Spatial and Graph with SPATIAL_VECTOR_ACCELERATION=TRUE (see Section 1.19), that statement and the example using nested aggregates are no longer recommended, and nested aggregates can actually be slower than a single aggregate.
However, if you are using Oracle Locator, nested aggregates or SDO_AGGR_SET_UNION are recommended. For more information, see Section C.4 ("SDO_AGGR_UNION Example") in the Release 11.2 version of Oracle Spatial Developer's Guide.