Patent ID: 7177882

Claim:
In a database management system, a system for handling geographic raster data comprising: a first data table including a plurality of GeoRaster objects, each GeoRaster object including a spatial extent geometry and associated metadata, the spatial extent geometry identifying a footprint of a geographic raster data object and associated with at least one block of raster data; a second data table including a plurality of raster objects, each raster object associated with one block of raster data of a GeoRaster object and including information indicating a spatial extent of the block of raster data and information relating to the block of raster data; a first spatial index built on the first data table based on the spatial extent geometry of each of the plurality of GeoRaster objects, the first spatial index operable to retrieve a GeoRaster object from the first data table based on a relative spatial location of the GeoRaster object; a primary key index built on the second data table based on the information relating to the block of raster data, the index operable to retrieve a raster object from the second data table based on the information relating to the block of raster data associated with the retrieved raster object; and a viewer operable to display at least a GeoRaster object.