This is just too cool not to post. Many of you know about the DevEvents project I'm working on. If not, feel free to ping me. Part of the web application involves geo-context. Basically events are displayed to users (by default) based on their proximity to the event locations. To accomplish this I have several tables in the database with various geography related data. One of these tables takes advantage of the new SQL Server 2008 data type: Geography. This field essentially stores latitude and longitude, and SQL Server 2008 is then able to provide geography-related queries against it, like distance between two point.

But the really cool part for me so far is when you select data that contains the Geography data type. Along with the standard Results and Messages pane, there is a new 'Spatial results' pane. Clicking on this tab reveals a map-like visualization.

For the visualization below, I selected all points in Maine, Washington, Arizona, and Florida, and chose the Bonne projection. While I'd love to see all the points mapped, the visualization is limited to 5,000 results.

Anyway, just thought this was pretty cool!