4.2.3 Geography Advanced Faq: 4.3 Using Opengis Standards
4.2.3 Geography Advanced Faq: 4.3 Using Opengis Standards
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If your data is contained in a small area, you might find that choosing an appropriate projection and using GEOMETRY is the
best solution, in terms of performance and functionality available.
If your data is global or covers a continental region, you may find that GEOGRAPHY allows you to build a system without
having to worry about projection details. You store your data in longitude/latitude, and use the functions that have been defined
on GEOGRAPHY.
If you dont understand projections, and you dont want to learn about them, and youre prepared to accept the limitations in
functionality available in GEOGRAPHY, then it might be easier for you to use GEOGRAPHY than GEOMETRY. Simply load
your data up as longitude/latitude and go from there.
Refer to Section 8.8 for compare between what is supported for Geography vs. Geometry. For a brief listing and description of
Geography functions, refer to Section 8.3
spatial_ref_sys (
INTEGER NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
VARCHAR(256),
INTEGER,
VARCHAR(2048),
VARCHAR(2048)
For a listing of EPSG projection codes and their corresponding WKT representations, see http://www.opengeospatial.org/.
For a discussion of WKT in general, see the OpenGIS "Coordinate Transformation Services Implementation Specification"
at http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards. For information on the European Petroleum Survey Group (EPSG) and their
database of spatial reference systems, see http://www.epsg.org.