Importing and exporting KML into and from DashDB for Geospatial Analysis

Question

I am a recent convert to IBM's DashDB, and I considering proposing to use it at my work. My case would greatly be bolstered if I could show good, easy integration for geospatial analytics data, namely loading and performing SQL filtering on geodata currently in .shp or .kml formats. If it would be possible to also export the filtered data into a KML as a result that would be AMAZING.

So, to give a practical example, say I have an .SHP file with all the zipcodes in the US, I want to select the shape for the 02138 zip code and send it to the query-sender in KML format.

Does anyone have experience with that?

Answer 1

Loading .kml file directly to dashDB is currently not possible, as answered by another post here. You may use ArcGIS for Desktop to connect to dashDB if you want to do this.

https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/141194/importing-and-exporting-kml-into-and-from-dashdb-for-geospatial-analysis

On the other hand, uploading a .shp file is natively supported and is demonstrated in this tutorial below. Note that dashDB requires the upload file to be compressed in .zip, .tar or .gz file formats.

https://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SS6NHC/com.ibm.swg.im.dashdb.doc/tutorial/analyze-geospatial-data.html

Also, ArcGIS for Desktop should let you use its export features as well.

Answer 2

There are 2 options loading shape files: via the gui ("Load geospatial data") or via the CLPPlus command IDA LOADGEOSPATIALDATA .

Once the data is loaded it resides in the internal geometry format (e.g. as ST_Polygon), and can then be accessed in various formats through spatial functions imbedded in SQL calls. Unfortunately, kml is not one of the formats that dashDB supports as of now - options are GML, WKT, WKB.