Geospatial functions

Geospatial functions manipulate complex two-dimensional spatial objects and store them in a database according to the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards.

Geospatial functions manipulate complex two-dimensional spatial objects and store them in a database according to the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards.

Function naming conventions

The geospatial functions use the following naming conventions:

  • Most ST_function-name functions are compliant with the latest OGC standard OGC SFA-SQL version 1.2.1 (reference. number is OGC 06-104r4, date: 2010-08-04). Currently, some ST_function-name functions may not support all data types. Each function page contains details about the supported data types.

  • The STV_function-name functions are unique to Vertica and not compliant with OGC standards. Each function page explains its functionality in detail.

Verifying spatial objects validity

Many spatial functions do not validate their parameters. If you pass an invalid spatial object to an ST_ or STV_ function, the function might return an error or produce incorrect results.

To avoid this issue, Vertica recommends that you first run ST_IsValid on all spatial objects to validate the parameters. If your object is not valid, run STV_IsValidReason to get information about the location of the invalidity.

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