Learning Spatial Data in SQL Server 2008

PASS just published a new Top 10 list of mine over at the their web site. This one is the Top 10 Articles on the web if you’re trying to learn about spatial data. I’m not trying to say that I know what I’m doing with spatial data. I’m still feeling my way forward. These articles have proved to be the most useful in the learning I’ve done so far. I wanted to publish a little more information than we put into our Top 10 lists over at PASS. Having the list is good, but I thought it needed a bit of commentary to be complete.

All these articles are good and all the web sites hosting the articles have good stuff on them. A few of the web sites stand out. Paul Randal‘s site covers quite a lot more than spatial data, but he writes with such clarity that his posts are a must read. When you’re ready for more, you need to read the stuff at Bob Beauchemin’s blog. Again, there’s more than just spatial data to be had there, but Mr. Beauchemin has really done the research and he’s good enough to compile it for the rest of us. Those are, sort of, the introductory sites. When you’re ready to really and truly just go with all things spatial, the two sites that are going to prove most useful (or, at least that I’ve found most useful) are Spatial Ed(Ed Katibah) and Isaac Kunen. These are two of the people responsible for creating the spatial engine inside SQL Server. We can thank them for that, but better still, these guys are good about communicating what they’ve done, what it means, how it works, applications, ideas… You get the drift. If you’re really pursuing spatial data as an important component of your enterprise data, you need to read their stuff.

There are a few links that I couldn’t easily fit into the top 10 since they’re not discrete articles. I’ve already blogged about and reviewed Alastair Aitchison’s excellent book, Beginng Spatial with SQL Server 2008, but it’s worth another plug. You will also want to browse through the functionality being posted at the SQL Server Spatial Tools site over at CodePlex. Stuff there is pretty useful for getting your own functionality… functional. Finally, when you get stuck, if you get stuck, one of the best places to get unstuck is on the MSDN spatial forum, where a lot of the people already mentioned are answering questions and posting.

These are the resources I’ve found most useful in the little bit of spatial I’ve learned so far. I hope the top 10 list and this explanation of it prove useful.

UPDATE: Fixed link problem.

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