Are all SQL Geospatial implementations database specific?

Question

My team is looking into geospatial features offered by different database platforms.

Are all of the implementations database specific, or is there a ANSI SQL standard, or similar type of standard, which is being offered, or will be offered in the future?

I ask, because I would like the implemented code to be as database agnostic as possible (our project is written to be ANSI SQL standard).

Is there any known plan for standardization of this functionality in the future?

Answer 1

Currently, there are more than one specifications followed by popular proprietary and open source implementations of spatial databases:

• The OpenGIS - Simple Features for SQL
• ISO SQL Multimedia Specification for Spatial - ISO/IEC 13249-3:2006 - Information technology -- Database languages -- SQL multimedia and application packages -- Part 3: Spatial

PostGIS, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server and to some limited degree MySQL, all the databases implement the standard interfaces to manipulate spatial data. However, in spite of this fairly standardized features, all databases usually differ on simple SQL level what may make the database-agnostic implementation of your solution tricky. You likely need to survey the features you are interested and compare what various vendors provide.