Alpha Five Version 11 Feature Peek #32 Part 1: Where in the world is ... ?

No matter what it is you're looking for, you'll have a better shot at finding it if you build a table that can organize your locations by storing latitude and longitude in a records field. In this two-part video series, Selwyn's going to be letting you in on the advanced features of grids based on SQL tables that support the geography data type.

Let's kick things off with the first video. The sample table that Selwyn has set up is a table listing airports from different parts of the world. It includes fields for latitude and longitude, along with the field for location. The location field, (shown on the far left of the screen) is a special type of binary field that's only possible using databases that support the geography data type. In other words, this table is perfect for our demonstration.

Selwyn will start in design mode by heading to edit the fields in the grid builder window. When he highlights that location field, he needs to make sure "location" is selected and checked in the middle window, which is marked "selected" (you'll see in the the video that even Selwyn gets confused here, so make sure to note that specification). When everything its correctly selected, we know that we're working in the location field, and Selwyn will start the customization in the properties window.

The property he's looking for is the geography field info option, which will allow him to enter whatever he specifies in that location field. For example, Selwyn keeps latitude and longitude marked, which you saw earlier when you saw those two fields in the example table.


Because Selwyn also turns on the updates in design mode, you'll be able to see everything working when he switches to working preview. To show exactly what's happening here, Selwyn will change the numbers on the latitude and longitude to show the difference as he goes.

Next, you'll get to see the SQL that was generated when Selwyn changed those few numbers, complete with binary code. Here, you'll get to see that by setting the property of the latitude and longitude, Selwyn was able to create a advanced update statement.

Selwyn finishes things up by explaining how things work if you were to use an insert, and at that point, we're out of time on part one. Make sure to watch the video to get the rest of the details.

But it's not over yet! Stay tuned for part two, coming soon.