What is a geospatial query?
Geospatial queries are specialized types of SQL queries supported in Athena. They differ from non-spatial SQL queries in the following ways:
-
Using the following specialized geometry data types:
point
,line
,multiline
,polygon
, andmultipolygon
. -
Expressing relationships between geometry data types, such as
distance
,equals
,crosses
,touches
,overlaps
,disjoint
, and others.
Using geospatial queries in Athena, you can run these and other similar operations:
-
Find the distance between two points.
-
Check whether one area (polygon) contains another.
-
Check whether one line crosses or touches another line or polygon.
For example, to obtain a point
geometry data type from values of type
double
for the geographic coordinates of Mount Rainier in Athena, use the
ST_Point (longitude, latitude)
geospatial function, as in the following
example.
ST_Point(-121.7602, 46.8527)