The Sad State of SQL Spatial Standards – Take 2

There is a useful exchange going on over on the Microsoft Forums in relation to the paucity of information on geographic objects (as against planar objects) in the OGC SQL standard: this is in the context of SQL Server 2008 “Katmai” Spatial implementation. This exchange occured over Microsoft’s reading of the OGC standards in respect of the coordinate ordering of data in their geography data type (as against their geometry planar data type). The upshot is that the Microsoft engineers chose to have the coordinates in a geography ordered Latitude/Longitude which is at odds with how Oracle, PostGIS and many other vendors order the ordinates (they use Longitude/Latitude).

In the exchange I note that Google Maps uses Latitude/Longitude and observe that it is not so much the coordinate ordering that is the issue, or even “standards compliance”, rather it is about the functionality of the implementation.