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Getting Started with the geography Data Type
The geography spatial data type, geography, is implemented as a .NET common language runtime (CLR) data type in SQL Server. This type represents data in a round-earth coordinate system. The SQL Server geography data type stores ellipsoidal (round-earth) data, such as GPS latitude and longitude coordinates.
The following examples show how to add and query geography data. The first example creates a table with an identity column and a geography column GeogCol1. A third column renders the geography column into its Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Well-Known Text (WKT) representation, and uses the STAsText() method. Two rows are then inserted: one row contains a LineString instance of geography, and one row contains a Polygon instance.
IF OBJECT_ID ( 'dbo.SpatialTable', 'U' ) IS NOT NULL
DROP TABLE dbo.SpatialTable;
GO
CREATE TABLE SpatialTable
( id int IDENTITY (1,1),
GeogCol1 geography,
GeogCol2 AS GeogCol1.STAsText() );
GO
INSERT INTO SpatialTable (GeogCol1)
VALUES (geography::STGeomFromText('LINESTRING(-122.360 47.656, -122.343 47.656)', 4326));
INSERT INTO SpatialTable (GeogCol1)
VALUES (geography::STGeomFromText('POLYGON((-122.358 47.653, -122.348 47.649, -122.348 47.658, -122.358 47.658, -122.358 47.653))', 4326));
GO
The second example uses the STIntersection() method to return the points where the two previously inserted geography instances intersect.
DECLARE @geog1 geography; DECLARE @geog2 geography; DECLARE @result geography; SELECT @geog1 = GeogCol1 FROM SpatialTable WHERE id = 1; SELECT @geog2 = GeogCol1 FROM SpatialTable WHERE id = 2; SELECT @result = @geog1.STIntersection(@geog2); SELECT @result.STAsText();
