Virtual Earth support in Katmai

Following on from the recent Katmai announcement, today I was asked the question of Geospatial support in SQL Server from a client.

Here goes - 

Spatial will be supported in the next release of SQL Server (code named Katmai) as system data types

Katmai is scheduled to ship in 2008 and will most likely be called SQL Server 2008

Katmai spatial will support two models: a “Flat Earth” planar data type and a “Round Earth” geodetic data type

The Flat Earth data type (GEOMETRY) will support the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Simple Features for SQL Specification with support for approximately 70 spatial methods/functions

There will be spatial indexes for both planar and geodetic data types

https://virtualearth.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!2BBC66E99FDCDB98!8675.entry