Microsoft TerraServer: a spatial data warehouse

ABSTRACT

Microsoft® TerraServer stores aerial, satellite, and topographic images of the earth in a SQL database available via the Internet. It is the world's largest online atlas, combining eight terabytes of image data from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and SPIN-2. Internet browsers provide intuitive spatial and text interfaces to the data. Users need no special hardware, software, or knowledge to locate and browse imagery. This paper describes how terabytes of “Internet unfriendly” geo-spatial images were scrubbed and edited into hundreds of millions of “Internet friendly” image tiles and loaded into a SQL data warehouse. All meta-data and imagery are stored in the SQL database.

TerraServer demonstrates that general-purpose relational database technology can manage large scale image repositories, and shows that web browsers can be a good geo-spatial image presentation system.

REFERENCES

• 1: Barclay, T., et. al., The Microsoft TerraServer, Microsoft Technical Report MS TR 98 17, Microsoft Corp, Redmond, WA. http://research.microsoft.com/scripts/pubDB/pubsasp.a sp?RecordID=155
• 2: F. Davis, W. Farrell, Jim Gray, R. Mechoso, R. Moore, S. Sides, M. Stonebraker., "EOSDIS Alternative Architecture Final Report," Sept., 1994, http://research.microsoft.com/~gray/EOS_DIS/
• 3: B. Kobler , J. Berbert , P. Caulk , P. C. Hariharan, Architecture and design of storage and data management for the NASA Earth observing system Data and Information System (EOSDIS), Proceedings of the 14th IEEE Symposium on Mass Storage Systems, p.65, September 11-14, 1995
• 4: Laurence Moore, "Transverse Mercator Projections and U.S. Geological Survey Digital Products", U.S. Geological Survey, Professional Paper.
• 5: Arther H. Robinson, Joel L. Morrison, Phillip C. Muehrcke, A. Jon Kimerling, Stehen C. Guptill, Elements of Cartography, Sixth Edition, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., U.S.A. 1995, ISBN 0-471-55579-7.
• 6: Hanan Samet, The design and analysis of spatial data structures, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 1990
• 7: Snyder, J.P., "An Album of Map Projections", U.S. Geological Survey, Professional Paper, 1453, (1989).
• 8: Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 http://microsoft.com/SQL/

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.2 DATABASE MANAGEMENT
      H.2.8 Database applications
          Subjects: Spatial databases and GIS

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL

General Terms:
Algorithms, Design, Experimentation

Keywords:
VLDB, geo-spatial, image databases, internet