New and Changed Features

This section describes new and changed Oracle Spatial features for Release 9.2.

Validation with Context

You can now validate a geometry or a layer and obtain additional information about the context (the coordinate, edge, or ring) that causes any geometry to be invalid.

The new SDO_GEOM.VALIDATE_GEOMETRY_WITH_CONTEXT function performs the same checks as the SDO_GEOM.VALIDATE_GEOMETRY function, but also includes context information if the geometry is not valid.
The new SDO_GEOM.VALIDATE_LAYER_WITH_CONTEXT procedure performs the same checks as the SDO_GEOM.VALIDATE_LAYER procedure, but also includes context information about any invalid geometries.

Both of these new interfaces are documented in Chapter 11.

Note that SDO_GEOM.VALIDATE_GEOMETRY function and SDO_GEOM.VALIDATE_LAYER procedure are deprecated and will not be supported in future release of Spatial. You are encouraged to switch to the new interfaces.

Utility Functions

A new Spatial utility package (SDO_UTIL) is provided, with the following functions.

The SDO_UTIL.EXTRACT function returns the geometry that represents a specified element (and optionally a ring) of the input geometry
The SDO_UTIL.GETVERTICES function returns the coordinates of the vertices of the input geometry.

The utility functions are documented in Chapter 17.

Partitioned Spatial Indexes: Splitting and Merging Supported

ALTER TABLE partitioning statements for splitting and merging partitions, which were not supported in the previous release, are now supported. For information about using partitioned Spatial indexes, see Section 4.1.7.

Exchanging Partitions Including Indexes

You can use the ALTER TABLE statement with the EXCHANGE PARTITION...INCLUDING INDEXES clause to exchange a spatial table partition and its index partition with a corresponding table and its index, as explained in Section 4.1.8. In the previous release of Spatial, this operation caused an error to be generated.

Parallel Index Creation and Rebuilding

Spatial indexes can now be created and rebuilt using parallel execution. The { NOPARALLEL | PARALLEL [ integer ] } option is supported for the CREATE INDEX and ALTER INDEX REBUILD statements, which are documented in Chapter 8.

Deferred Modifications to an Index

Modifications to a spatial index can be deferred until after spatial table insert, update, and delete operations are finished, and then the index can be synchronized with the table. See the description of the index_status keyword for the ALTER INDEX statement in Chapter 8.

SDO_CS.VIEWPORT_TRANSFORM to_srname Parameter Not Supported

The SDO_CS.VIEWPORT_TRANSFORM function format with the to_srname parameter, which was supported in the previous release, is no longer supported. You must use the format with the to_srid parameter.