Most businesses today already store extensive location data, for customers, suppliers, competitors, branches and many other items. For many large corporations, that data is stored in DB2 for z/OS. The availability of spatial features within DB2 for z/OS will allow those organisations to derive valuable new information and deliver new capabilities to their customers.
So, what exactly is spatial data? Here's a simple definition:
Spatial data represents real-world features and their relationship to one another. This includes geographic features (rivers, cities, mountains, forests, seas, lakes, etc), areas (flood zones, military exclusion zones, sales territories, etc and even events that occur at a specific location (a car accident, a crime, etc).
In its most basic form, spatial data is made up of one or more sets of co-ordinates that specify a location (usually but not always on planet Earth!).
When combined with conventional data (customer information, sales data, etc) it can be surprisingly useful in a whole variety of different applications, across virtually any industry.
