This chapter explains how to use the Control Center to create an index for your spatial data.
After you populate spatial columns with your data, you are ready to create a spatial index. Typical indexing structures, such as a B-tree, perform linear, one-dimensional sorts on table data. Table data that has been enabled for spatial operations is not stored as a single entry, but is two-dimensional. For example, spatial geometries such as a polygon consists of several coordinate values in one spatial column or layer. Because a B-tree index cannot handle spatial data types, DB2 Spatial Extender created a proprietary indexing technology known as a grid index. The grid index is based on the B-tree index, which was enhanced to handle two-dimensional data and perform indexing on spatial columns. The grid index supports three layers and is designed to provide good performance over a wide range of objects, sizes, and distributions of data. For more information about spatial indexes, see Spatial indexes.
To find out what authorization is required for creating a spatial index, see Authorization.