Spatial data is associated with geographic locations such as cities, towns etc. A spatial database is optimized to store and query data representing objects. These are the objects which are defined in a geometric space.

Characteristics of Spatial Database

A spatial database system has the following characteristics

1. It is a database system
2. It offers spatial data types (SDTs) in its data model and query language.
3. It supports spatial data types in its implementation, providing at least spatial indexing and efficient algorithms for spatial join.

Example

A road map is a visualization of geographic information. A road map is a 2-dimensional object which contains points, lines, and polygons that can represent cities, roads, and political boundaries such as states or provinces. 

In general, spatial data can be of two types:

1. Vector data: This data is represented as discrete points, lines and polygons
2. Rastor data: This data is represented as a matrix of square cells.