A jewelry store owner is expanding her business and must decide the best location for a new store. She has obtained a demographic data sample that contains a table of annual incomes by location. She wants an answer to the question, "Who are the potential high-paying customers over 10 miles from my existing stores?"

Using DB2 Spatial Extender and spatial data, she can find an answer with a fairly simple query:

  select * from population p
   where p.income > 125000
     and exist
         (
           select * from stores s
            where distance(c.location, s.location) > 10
         );

The population and store locations are new data types called points, stored in the same tables as the business data, such as the population income. The process of finding the data she needs is as straightforward as determining the distances between the upper-income population and her stores and returning those greater than 10 miles away. Using ESRI ArcView, she can see the locations on a map and determine the areas with the greatest population density.