Storing Drawings Within Spatial DBMS

Manifold features integrated read / write / edit, multiuser connections to a variety of spatial DBMS packages. In general, operation is fully automatic: when a Manifold drawing is uploaded to a spatial DBMS the Manifold geometry will automatically be converted into the native DBMS geometry type. When a drawing is linked or imported from a spatial DBMS source the native DBMS geometry will be automatically cast into Manifold geometry.

Manifold provides two ways of storing drawings within spatial DBMS:

Native storage within a spatial DBMS::- Examples are Oracle Spatial, IBM DB2, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 (CTP5 or greater) or PostgreSQL using the native geometry type specified by the DBMS. Connecting to one of these spatial DBMS packages using the "native" connection, such as OCI for Oracle, tells Manifold to automatically convert local Manifold geometry for drawings into whatever the target spatial DBMS users as its own native geometry type.

Non-native storage within almost any DBMS::

Manifold can confer spatial DBMS capability to almost any DBMS. When using Manifold-managed spatial storage, we have the choice of what geometry type we would like to use. Examples are storing drawings as tables within, say, MySQL or SQL Server using any of the binary geometry types supported by Manifold, such as GeomWKB (OGC WKB), GeomSHP (legacy ESRI geodatabases), or GEOMETRY (Manifold's own high performance geometry type). Normally the choice will be made between Manifold Geometry type or OGC WKB type. In addition, Manifold can establish a generic spatial index. The spatial index is used together with the binary data to allow "ordinary" DBMS packages to function as a spatial DBMS. A special case of Manifold-managed storage is the use of the Manifold Spatial Extender for SQL Server 2005 to provide especially fast spatial DBMS capability within SQL Server 2005. See the Example: Storing a Drawing in Manifold Spatial DBMS topic.