When GEO meets SQL: Hotwiring Data to Locations

I gave this presenation last Saturday at SQLSaturday41, in Atlanta. This was conducted by the local SQL Server user group and PASS, the international association of SQL Server professionals.

The talk was ambitious: Show the geospatial characteristics (distance, drive time) for members of an ice cream gourmet society related to three ice cream facilities. Substitute patients for members and clinics for facilities as you please. Key methods, properties, and queries were shown, as well as several tricks and traps.  All of this was done in the context of enhancing an existing data mart/warehouse with geo-aware data. More details, including the slide deck and samples, can be found here .

Michael

Session on SQL Server Geospatial Features to be presented

On April 24th, I'll be presenting the topic: When GEO meets SQL: Hotwiring Data to Locations at SQLSaturday in the Atlanta regional Microsoft office.


This is a beginner's level session on geospatial for the DBA and TSQL developer. We will focus on the adaptation of the spatial capabilities to a data warehouse and how to acquire resources with little or no money ( a key requirement in the health care field). The description is below:


Spatial fields, operators, and functions were introduced in SQL 2008. I will detail how these can be integrated with location-based information in existing data warehouses and marts - and on the cheap. We will briefly discuss the basics (geometry versus geography, geocoding), then move on to the common problems with this task and the remedies.

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Stay tuned. I'll let you know how it went.