Bryan,

Upon reading the URL that you presented I have a greater
understanding (perhaps not complete) of what you are
looking for as supported in InterBase.

(from Oracle)
Oracle Spatial facilitates analysis based on the spatial
relationships of this data, like the proximity of store
locations to customers within a given distance, and sales
revenue per territory.

---

I worked with a client last year where they implemented
a solution similar to or perhaps exactly what you
are looking for. Their application is designed to provide
the 'best fit' service provider to a client based upon
a persons physical location in proximity to the service
providers location assuming that the servicee is a subsriber
to the available servicor.

They implemented the solution via physically storing some
geographical servicor data combined with run-time provided
servicee data and then fed to an InterBase UDF to calculate
the desired result.

InterBase UDFs are an extremely powerful utility to
extend the engines functionality while not bloating
the core engine footprint. I hope to see a library of
such useful UDFs emerge so that developers can plug them
in as needed and keep the engine small and fast.

I am however assuming that I understand your 'spatial'
data needs.

Markus


Bryan Harper wrote:

>
> From: "Bryan Harper" <BHarper@...>
>
> Hi all,
>
> Has any there been any discussion about the implementing spatial
> objects in future releases of InterBase? The reason I ask is that
> Oracle 8i "natively" supports spatial objects and I would like to
> have or be able to suggest possible alternatives.
>
> Let me explain what I mean by spatial objects. Basically what I am
> talking about is storing data for GIS(Geographic Information System)
> applications. For a better explanation and more details (from an
> Oracle point of view) see http://www.oracle.com/da
> tabase/options/spatial/index.html.
>
> Thank you
>
> Bryan
>
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