What Is the Geometry Service?

The Geometry Service provides a simplified interface to perform Geometry Service measurements, conversions, and operations. The Geometry Service provides the following capabilities:

  • Aggregate (buffer, centroid, envelope, union, intersection, convex hull, difference, symmetrical difference)
  • Transformation (coordinate transformations)
  • Measurement (area, distance, length, perimeter)
  • Predicate (contains, intersects, within)

This service provides a set of common operations that you can use to perform operations on content, regardless of the data provider. One advantage is that you can run the exact same operation against many different content repositories (for example, a native TAB file, an Oracle table, or a SQL Server table) by specifying different named tables; the same operation will work on each table type. Using the Geometry Service, you only need to worry about the request, not the location or type of data in the repository.

The Geometry Service is based on the well known mathematical concepts described in the OGC Simple Features Specification.