C
Locator

Oracle9i Locator (also referred to as Locator) supports the geocoding, storage, and retrieval of geocoded spatial data in Oracle9i databases. Locator is not designed to be an end-user application, but is a set of spatial capabilities for application developers.

Locator has been enhanced for release 9.0.1. In general, it 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 consist of the following:

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

• A spatial indexing capability that lets you create R-tree or quadtree-based spatial indexes on geometry data

• A geocode result object type that describes the geocode result definition

• A call interface described by two geocode result functions used for geocoding spatial data that also contains the output geocode result object and the geometry object

• Spatial operators that use the spatial index for performing spatial queries: SDO_FILTER, SDO_RELATE, SDO_NN, SDO_NN_DISTANCE, and SDO_WITHIN_DISTANCE

  Note: For Oracle8i, LOCATOR_WITHIN_DISTANCE was the only Locator operator supported. For Oracle9i, LOCATOR_WITHIN_DISTANCE and SDO_WITHIN_DISTANCE are synonyms (same signatures and behavior), and both are supported.

For information about spatial concepts, the SDO_GEOMETRY object type, and indexing and loading spatial data, see Chapters 1 through 4 in this manual. For reference and usage information about features supported by Locator, see the chapters listed in Table C-1.

Table C-1 Spatial Features Supported for Locator  

Chapter	Supported Locator Features
Chapter 7	Geocoding
Chapter 9	SQL statements for creating, altering, and deleting indexes
Chapter 10	SDO_GEOMETRY object type methods
Chapter 11	Spatial operators