Microsoft TerraServer: A spatial data warehouse

Microsoft(R) TerraServer stores aerial, satellite, and topographic images o f the earth in a SQL database available via the Internet. It is the world's largest online atlas, combining eight terabytes of image data from the Uni ted States Geological Survey (USGS) and SPIN-2. Internet browsers provide i ntuitive spatial and text interfaces to the data. Users need no special har dware, software, or knowledge to locate and browse imagery. This paper desc ribes how terabytes of "Internet unfriendly" gee-spatial images were scrubb ed and edited into hundreds of millions of "Internet friendly" image tiles and loaded into a SQL data warehouse. All meta-data and imagery are stored in the SQL database. TerraServer demonstrates that general-purpose relation al database technology can manage large scale image repositories, and shows that web browsers can be a good gee-spatial image presentation system.