Suppose you wanted to find all locations near to one that fell in area 122. All geographic features in the data base assigned the index of 122 are within the same area. With version 7.x, and now with 8.0 and 8i, of Oracle's Enterprise Database, spatial data is a regular part of an enterprise database. Until 8i, only vector data was included. The next release, now in beta, will add georeferenced rasters as well.
Any new technology is only as good as it is useful in real operations.
With these new enterprise spatial systems, it is possible to enter an address into the system. Geocoding will identify the coordinates of the address and associate them with a quad index value. With that same index value, any parcels at that location are returned as is, a raster TM image containing the same quad index, and classified by forest type. Attribute data associated with the parcel is compared to the imagery and current forest harvesting data added. Only a small amount of data is quickly retrieved from the database and transmitted to the user.