The ISO 19125 standard comes in two parts. Part 1, ISO 19125-1 (SFA-CA for "common architecture"), defines a model for two-dimensional simple features, with linear interpolation between vertices, defined in a hierarchy of classes; this part also defines representation of geometry in text and binary forms. Part 2 of the standard, ISO 19125-2 (SFA-SQL), defines a "SQL/MM" language binding API for SQL under the prefix "ST_".[1] The open access OGC standards cover additionally APIs for CORBA and OLE/COM, although these have lagged behind the SQL one and are not standardized by ISO. There are also adaptations to other languages covered below.
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The geometries are associated with spatial reference systems. The standard also specifies attributes, methods and assertions with the geometries, in the object-oriented style. In general, a 2D geometry is simple if it contains no self-intersection. The specification defines DE-9IM spatial predicates and several spatial operators that can be used to generate new geometries from existing geometries.
Part 2
Part 2 is a SQL binding to Part 1, providing a translation of the interface to non-object-oriented environments. For example, instead of a someGeometryObject.isEmpty() as in Part 1, SQL/MM uses a ST_IsEmpty(...) function in SQL.
Spatial
The spatial extension adds the datatypes "Circularstring", "CompoundCurve", "CurvePolygon", "PolyhedralSurface", the last of which is also included into the OGC standard. It also defines the SQL/MM versions of these types and operations on them.
Implementations
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Direct implementations of Part 2 (SQL/MM) include:
MySQL Spatial Extensions.[2] Up to MySQL 5.5, all of the functions that calculate relations between geometries are implemented using bounding boxes not the actual geometries.[3] Starting from version 5.6, MySQL offers support for precise object shapes.[4]
Implementations of the CORBA and OLE/COM interfaces detailed above are mainly produced by commercial vendors maintaining legacy technology.
R: The sf package[12] implements Simple Features and contains functions that bind to GDAL for reading and writing data, to GEOS for geometrical operations, and to PROJ for projection conversions and datum transformations.
The GDAL library implements the Simple Features data model in its OGR component.[13]
The Java-based deegree framework implements SFA (part 1) and various other OGC standards.[14]
The Rust library geo_types implements geometry primitives that adhere to the simple feature access standards.[15]
GeoSPARQL is an OGC standard that is intended to allow geospatially-linked data representation and querying based on RDF and SPARQL by defining an ontology for geospatial reasoning supporting a small Simple Features (as well as DE-9IM and RCC8) RDFS/OWL vocabulary for GML and WKT literals.[16]
As of 2012, various NoSQL databases had very limited support for "anything more complex than a bounding box or proximity search".[3]