One of the things on my list of stuff to check out in the RTM version of SQL Server Management Studio in 2008 is the Spatial Results tab that Isaac Kunen talked about a while back. He called it Eye Candy, and it really is. I started by grabbing a set of data from Virtual Earth expert (and good friend) John O'Brien, containing geometry figures ...

SQL Server 2008 has spatial types which are very useful for all kinds of applications. I thought it would be nice to produce one of those charts like you get in maps, telling you the distance between cities. So I start by populating the data. This uses the geography data type, which understands about the spherical nature of the world. The data is ...