Supported Data Sources

The Spatial Module supports spatial and non-spatial tables from a variety of data sources:

Table 1. Supported Data Sources
Data Source	Spatial Table	Non-Spatial Table	XY Table
JDBC	n/a	Read/Insert/Update/Delete	Read/Insert/Update/Delete
Oracle	Read/Insert/Update/Delete	Read/Insert/Update/Delete	Read/Insert/Update/Delete
MS SQL Server	Read/Insert/Update/Delete	Read/Insert/Update/Delete	Read/Insert/Update/Delete
PostGreSQL/PostGIS	Read/Insert/Update/Delete	Read/Insert/Update/Delete	Read/Insert/Update/Delete
GeoPackage	Read/Insert/Update/Delete	Read/Insert/Update/Delete	n/a
View	Read	Read	Read
Table Formats (file-based data sources)
Shapefile	Read	n/a	n/a
MapInfo TAB	Read/Insert/Update/Delete¹	n/a	n/a

Specialty tables include raster, grid, and seamless versions of .TAB. View tables are also supported. A view table is a subset of information from one or more data sources, including other view tables. Views are created with an MI SQL Select statement.

Spatial tables contain a geometry column that allows the table to be rendered on a map or used in spatial queries. The spatial information can be stored in a MAPINFO_MapCatalog that Spatial Module reads to understand the data types. If a MAPINFO_MapCatalog does not exist for the database, the Spatial Module will derive the data types directly from the data source.

Non-spatial tables containing columns for X and Y coordinates that represent a location (that is, a point) can be expressed as a spatial table composed entirely of point geometries. The metadata to represent the non-spatial table can either come from the MapCatalog or be part of the named table definition. Named tables are explained in the Resources and Data section in the Spectrum™ Technology Platform Spectrum Spatial Guide on support.pb.com.

The Spatial Module also supports an extensible data provider API for accessing custom data sources. This can be downloaded from the Spectrum Spatial section of the Welcome page, under Sample Applications.

¹ Insert, Update, Delete apply to native TAB and extended native TAB (NativeX) files on Windows operating systems only.