Geocoding

Abstract

Even though the dedicated spatial datatypes, geometry and geography, are a relatively recent addition to SQL Server, almost every existing SQL Server database already contains some form of spatial information, that is, data that describes the location of some feature or other. This spatial information might not be of the sort we have considered so far in this book, being described using coordinates from a spatial reference system, but might instead be the addresses of customers or suppliers, postal codes, delivery routes, or the names of cities or regions for which a sales manager is responsible. Wouldn’t it be useful if you could conduct spatial analysis based on this sort of common, unstructured spatial information? That is exactly what geocoding enables you to do.