Well Known Binary

The Well Known Binary format (hereafter WKB) provides a non-textual, binary representation of a geometric shape. It is used to:

• Allow shapes to be transferred between CockroachDB and a SQL client or application.
• Provide a portable binary format that can be read across different platforms.

WKB is obtained by serializing a shape as a sequence of numbers. For more detailed information about the structure of the WKB format, see the diagrams showing WKB integer codes in the OpenGIS Implementation Specification for Geographic information - Simple feature access - Part 1: Common architecture.

The Extended Well Known Binary (EWKB) format is the same as WKB, with an SRID representation prepended to the data structure.

See also

• Spatial features
• Spatial indexes
• Spatial and GIS Glossary of Terms
• OpenGIS Implementation Specification for Geographic information - Simple feature access - Part 1: Common architecture
• Well known text
• GeoJSON
• SRID 4326 - longitude and latitude
• Introducing Distributed Spatial Data in Free, Open Source CockroachDB (blog post)