Why use the SQL Server 2008 geography data type?

Question

I am redesigning a customer database and one of the new pieces of information I would like to store along with the standard address fields (Street, City, etc.) is the geographic

Answer 1

Another thing to consider is the storage space taken up by each method. The geography type is stored as a VARBINARY(MAX). Try running this script:

CREATE TABLE dbo.Geo
(
    geo geography

)

GO

CREATE TABLE dbo.LatLon
(
    lat decimal(9, 6)
,   lon decimal(9, 6)

)

GO

INSERT dbo.Geo
SELECT geography::Point(36.204824, 138.252924, 4326) UNION ALL
SELECT geography::Point(51.5220066, -0.0717512, 4326) 

GO 10000

INSERT dbo.LatLon
SELECT  36.204824, 138.252924 UNION
SELECT 51.5220066, -0.0717512

GO 10000

EXEC sp_spaceused 'dbo.Geo'
EXEC sp_spaceused 'dbo.LatLon'

Result:

name    rows    data     
Geo     20000   728 KB   
LatLon  20000   400 KB

The geography data-type takes up almost twice as much space.