In the past decade, location analysis has outgrown its traditional use in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and has become a critical component in business applications. The vast majority of commercial franchises employ location-based analysis and services in their day-to-day activities. With this growing usage, scalable and manageable solutions for location-based analysis and management have become a necessity rather than an option. Oracle Spatial is the principal component of Oracle that effectively addresses this need for location or spatial information management. This product has evolved from its simple beginnings in Oracle8i and prior releases to a full-fledged suite of products in Oracle lOg. The suite supports efficient and scalable storage and retrieval of spatial data using native data types and indexes, and provides new functionality for analysis and visualization of spatial data. Consistent with Oracle's motto of enabling storage of "all" data inside an Oracle database, Oracle Spatial not only extends all the benefits of an Oracle database to spatial data, but also enhances this functionality by adding location-specific analysis and visualization.
