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, advanced spatial functions, or Spatial Web services, 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 the Standard Edition One, Standard Edition, and Enterprise Edition of Oracle Database, and with Oracle Database XE (Express Edition). 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.

If you want to ensure that you are using only features available in Locator, see Section B.1, "Installing and Deinstalling Locator or Spatial Manually". For licensing information about Spatial and Locator, see Oracle Database Licensing Information.

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 subprograms (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

• Most geometry functions and spatial aggregate functions (as explained in Table B-1)

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

• Tuning subprograms (SDO_TUNE package, described in Chapter 31)

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

• Classes in the oracle.spatial.geometry (sdoapi.jar) and oracle.spatial.util (sdoutil.jar) packages of the Spatial Java API (described in Oracle Spatial Java API Reference)

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 require 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.