Points

SAP HANA includes a spatial engine and supports spatial data types and methods for processing spatial data. Spatial data is data that describes the position, shape, and orientation of objects in a defined space.

Source: SAP HANA Spatial Reference

Open the SQL editor of your choice (web or desktop based) connected to your SAP HANA database instance.

Type the following SQL statement.

select NEW ST_POINT(0,0) FROM DUMMY;

This query selects a point in the 2-dimensional 2D Euclidean space. A point defines a single location in space. A point always has an X and Y coordinate. In the example above it is (0, 0), i.e. X=0 and Y=0.

Spatial support in SAP HANA database follows the ISO/IEC 13249-3 “SQL multimedia and application packages – Part 3: Spatial” (SQL/MM) standard. This standard defines:

• how to store, retrieve and process spatial data using SQL,
• how spatial data is to be represented as values,
• which functions are available for converting, comparing, and processing this data in various ways.

A key component of this standard is the use of the spatial data types hierarchy. Within the hierarchy, the prefix ST is used for all data types (also referred to as classes or types).

The ST_POINT type is a 0-dimensional geometry which represents a single location. To get an object of the ST_POINT spatial type you need to call a type’s constructor following the syntax NEW ST_Point(<x>,<y>), where x and y are the corresponding longitude and latitude coordinate values of data type DOUBLE.

Execute the query. Congratulations! You’ve just run your very first query using the spatial capabilities of SAP HANA.

The Web-based workbench returns a question mark (?) as a result of the query execution. In some other SQL clients the value like 010100000000000000000000000000000000000000 can be returned.

This is because SAP HANA database stores spatial objects not in the text, but in the binary form. To get a human-readable value you need to apply a method ST_asWKT() to the ST_POINT object. WKT stands for Well-known text, which is a text markup language for representing vector geometry objects defined by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). SAP HANA follows this industry standard.

Syntax for Spatial Functions must be in Objective-style, therefore modify the statement to use object syntax as shown below and execute.

select NEW ST_POINT(0,0).ST_asWKT() FROM DUMMY;

Now the result of the query POINT (0 0) can be read and understood by a human.

The WKT standard can also be used to define a point in the constructor. The following query

select NEW ST_POINT('POINT (0 0)').ST_asWKT() FROM DUMMY;

will return the same result as NEW ST_POINT(0,0)