B Oracle Locator

Oracle Locator (also referred to as Locator) is a feature of Oracle Database 11g Standard Edition. Locator provides core features and services available in Oracle Spatial. It provides significant capabilities typically required to support Internet and wireless service-based applications and partner-based GIS solutions. Locator is not designed to be a solution for geographic information system (GIS) applications requiring complex spatial data management. If you need capabilities such as linear referencing, spatial functions, or coordinate system transformations, use Oracle Spatial instead of Locator.

Like Spatial, Locator is not designed to be an end-user application, but is a set of spatial capabilities for application developers.

Locator is available with both the Standard and Enterprise Editions of Oracle Database 11g. Spatial is a priced option available only with Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition. Spatial includes all Locator features as well as other features that are not available with Locator.

The installation of Locator depends on the successful and proper installation of Oracle Multimedia. Oracle Multimedia is installed and configured with Oracle Database 11g, although you can install Oracle Multimedia manually if necessary, as documented in Oracle Multimedia User's Guide. During the installation of Oracle Multimedia, Locator is installed.

In general, Locator includes the data types, operators, and indexing capabilities of Oracle Spatial, along with a limited set of the functions and procedures of Spatial. The Locator features include the following:

• An object type (SDO_GEOMETRY) that describes and supports any type of geometry

• A spatial indexing capability that lets you create spatial indexes on geometry data

• Spatial operators (described in Chapter 19) that use the spatial index for performing spatial queries

• Some geometry functions and the SDO_AGGR_MBR spatial aggregate function

• Coordinate system support for explicit geometry and layer transformations (SDO_CS.TRANSFORM function and SDO_CS.TRANSFORM_LAYER procedure, described in Chapter 21)

• Tuning functions and procedures (SDO_TUNE package, described in Chapter 31)

• Spatial utility functions (SDO_UTIL package, described in Chapter 32)

• Integration with Oracle Application Server 10g

For information about spatial concepts, the SDO_GEOMETRY object type, support for SQL Multimedia types annotation text, and indexing and loading of spatial data, see Chapters 1 through 5 in this guide. For reference and usage information about features supported by Locator, see the chapter or section listed in Table B-1.

Table B-2 lists Spatial features that are not supported for Locator, with the chapter in this guide or the separate manual that describes the feature.

Although Locator is available on both the Standard and Enterprise Editions of Oracle Database 11g, some Locator features requires database features that are not available or are limited on the Standard Edition. Some of those Locator features and their availability are listed in Table B-3.