SRID

A Spatial Reference IDentifier is a unique value used to unambiguously identify projected, unprojected, and local spatial coordinate system definitions. These coordinate systems form the heart of all GIS applications.

Virtually all major spatial vendors have created their own SRID implementation or refer to those of an authority, such as the European Petroleum Survey Group (EPSG). (NOTE: As of 2005 the EPSG SRID values are now maintained by the International Association of Oil & Gas Producers (OGP) Surveying & Positioning Committee).

SRIDs are the primary key for the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) spatial_ref_sys metadata table for the Simple Features for SQL Specification, Versions 1.1 and 1.2, which is defined as follows: In spatially-enabled databases (such as IBM DB2, IBM Informix, Microsoft SQL Server 2008, MySQL, Oracle and PostgreSQL), SRIDs are used to uniquely identify the coordinate systems used to define columns of spatial data or individual spatial objects in a spatial column (depending on the spatial implementation). SRIDs are typically associated with a well known text (WKT) string definition of the coordinate system (SRTEXT, above). From the Well Known Text wiki.gis.com page, “A WKT string for a spatial reference system describes the datum, geoid, coordinate system, and map projection of the spatial objects”. Here are two common coordinate systems with their EPSG SRID value followed by their well known text:

UTM, Zone 17N, NAD27 - SRID = 2029 WGS84 - SRID = 4326 SRID values associated with spatial data can be used to constrain spatial operations — for instance, spatial operations cannot be performed between spatial objects with differing SRIDs in some systems, or trigger coordinate system transformations between spatial objects in others.