Wednesday, April 3, 2019

MySQL Workbench Spatial Viewer or How to See your GEOMETRY Data

The past couple of blog entries have been on Geographic Information Systems and Geometric Data.  Visualizing that data with MySQL Workbench makes it easier for me to see what the results really mean.
Example drawn by MySQL Workbench 8.0.15
Workbench 8.0.15 will draw the polygon with the Spatial View Option

So how do you get there?

Start Workbench, create a new SQL Tab in your favorite scratch schema, and crate the table below. 

CREATE TABLE `test` (
  `id` INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `geom` GEOMETRY NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`));

Next add some data.

INSERT INTO `test`
  (`geom`)
VALUES
  (st_geomfromtext
  ('polygon((0 0,0 3,3 0, 2 2,0 0),(1 1,1 2,2 1,2 2, 1 1))')
   );

The run the query.

select geom from test;

However the result will default to the Result Grid. Look off to the right hand side of the results window to see a series of stacked icons and the default is the Result Grid.  And that 'BLOB' is the result of the query.  But that result is not exactly visually stunning.

Output from the query in the results grid view
The 'BLOB' is the result of the query.

Click on the Form Editor icon. It is directly below the Result Grid Icon

Select the Form Editor Icon
And you should see the image from the top of this blog entry.

Bonus!


Now scroll down below the Form Editor icon and select Spatial View.

Spatial View of the Query