oracle spatial fun exercises?

Question

1. please help me connect spatials to oracle 10g XE
2. where can i find fun things to do with oracle spatial?

Answer 1

Perhaps this might be of help:

Build a Google Earth Interface on Oracle Database XE

Answer 2

First, bookmark the reference, these are invaluable when you are writing spatial queries. If you it to be fast (particularly with joins) make sure you use SDO_RELATE (it was in the order of 100-1000x faster for spanning linestrings for me [over SDO_GEOM.RELATE oops]).

Second, Download SQL Developer (don't download 1.x, you will hate it), it will list the geometry column in its component parts instead of barfing at it like most utilities I have tried. So you don't need to spend time looking at the raw points, etc. When creating a geometry column, select the complex option, go to the MDSYS schema then scroll to SDO_GEOMETRY. When creating indexes for the spatial column click domain -> MDSYS then you should have RTREE and SPATIAL types. SDO_GEOMETRY also works as a type so you can pass it to and from procedures and functions within oracle.

As for what to do, that is up to you. I have done everything from making a service availability tool to writing utilities to span over linestrings with stop conditions. In most cases it will depend on your target field as to what is considered nifty and shiny.