Licensing options for this format begin with FME Professional Edition.
SpatialWare is server-based data management software from MapInfo® Corporation. It enables businesses to store, manage, and manipulate spatial data (that is, location-based data), within an Informix or SQL Server database.
SpatialWare enables a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) to store both spatial and non-spatial data by providing a new spatial sw_geometry column type to the underlying RDBMS. Spatial data include a variety of non-traditional data types. Digital representations of highways, fiber-optic lines, sales territories, or land parcels are all examples of spatial data; data that have a physical context or existence in space.
FME is a SpatialWare client application capable of connecting to SpatialWare through ODBC regardless of the platform on which it is located.
Overview
SpatialWare provides a seamless data model into which geographic data is stored. SpatialWare provides a relational data model organized around tables. With typical uses of FME, a SpatialWare feature type1The terms “feature type” and “table” are used interchangeably throughout this chapter. is equivalent to an RDBMS table. FME can be used to read and write any RDBMS table whether or not it has a spatial (sw_geometry) column. A spatial column has the following properties:
- Each spatial column may have a spatial index.
- A single relational table can only have 1 spatial column.
- Features in a spatial column may be either 2D or three-dimensional (3D). Mixed dimensionality is allowed in a spatial column.
- Each table may have a single coordinate system in which features are ultimately stored.
FME’s SpatialWare Reader and Writer leverage the unique capabilities of SpatialWare.
The reader retrieves features from SpatialWare by constructing queries consisting of both spatial and/or non-spatial components. A SpatialWare database may have a very large number of features, therefore the query building capability is critical to ensure that FME reader module is capable of satisfying highly focused data requests.
The writer takes advantage of SpatialWare’s transaction model to ease the task of importing data into SpatialWare. The SpatialWare writer is also able to operate in three modes (a “DELETE” mode, an “UPDATE” mode or an “INSERT” mode), enabling FME to be used as a key component in a SpatialWare-based solution. The SpatialWare reader is also capable of performing multi-table join queries, thereby exploiting the full power of the underlying RDBMS.