Geospatial Analytics

PlaidCloud handles geometry as a first-class part of a workflow: you import spatial files, build geometry from coordinates, reshape and match it, and publish the result — without leaving the platform and without a separate GIS tool.

This guide is the path through those capabilities. For the reference detail on any one step, see Geospatial steps.

Geometry Is Just a Column

Every spatial step reads and writes geometry as WKT (well-known text) in an ordinary text column. That has three consequences worth knowing up front:

No type declaration. A geometry column is a text column. Nothing to configure, nothing to migrate.
Steps compose freely. Any spatial step’s output feeds any other’s input, in any order.
SQL and geometry mix. A geometry column sits alongside your measures, so you can filter, group, and join on both in the same step.

1. Get Geometry Into a Table

You have two routes in, depending on where the geometry comes from.

From a spatial file. Use Spatial File Import for MapInfo .TAB, ESRI .shp, .kml, or .geojson. Upload the file and its sidecars to the same document folder — the step reads the companions (.shx/.dbf/.prj for a shapefile, .dat/.map/.id for a .TAB) automatically. One row per feature comes out, with a WKT geometry column and the file’s attributes.

From coordinates you already have. If your data carries longitude and latitude columns, build points with a Table Extract expression — this runs in the database, so no rows leave the warehouse:

func.geom_as_wkt(
    func.geom_point(
        get_column(table, 'Longitude'),
        get_column(table, 'Latitude'),
    )
)

2. Shape the Geometry

With geometry in a column, reshape it to answer the question you actually have.

Question	Step
What is within n miles of each store?	Spatial Trade Area
What is within a fixed distance of this shape?	Spatial Buffer
What is the combined footprint of each region?	Spatial Combine
What area do these points enclose?	Spatial Poly-Build
Where do these two footprints overlap, or differ?	Spatial Process
How do I make these boundaries cheaper to draw?	Spatial Generalize
How do I tile this area into equal cells?	Spatial Make Grid

Trade Area is usually where a retail or service-territory analysis starts: give it a table of locations and a set of radii, and it returns concentric rings you can match customers against.

3. Match Locations to Territories

The two matching steps answer different questions and run by different routes.

Which territory is each customer in? Use Spatial Match. It runs as a spatial predicate join in the database, so it scales with the table. Pick the relationship — intersects, within, or contains — and it emits one row per matching pair.

Which are the nearest stores to each customer? Use Spatial Find Nearest. It keeps the N closest rows per target and adds a computed distance column in the unit you choose. Also SQL-route, so it scales the same way.

Which customers fell outside every territory? Use Spatial Match (Intersect / Unmatched) in Unmatched mode. The same step also emits the overlap geometry itself when you need the intersection rather than the pairing.

4. Measure

Spatial Info appends area, length, centroid, and bounding-rectangle columns. These are WGS84 geodesic measurements, so square miles are real square miles rather than a planar approximation — which matters as soon as you compare territories at different latitudes.

For a straight point-to-point distance between two columns on the same row, a SQL expression is cheaper than a step.

5. Publish

Geometry that stays in a table is not an answer anyone can act on.

Report Map renders geometry into a PDF report, alongside charts and tables from the same workflow.
The result table feeds dashboards like any other table — the geometry column carries through, and the measures beside it are what most dashboards actually chart.
Export steps write the table out to CSV, Excel, or an external database when a downstream GIS tool needs it.

Coming From Alteryx

Every Alteryx spatial tool has a PlaidCloud route. Converted workflows pick it automatically; the Alteryx conversion matrix lists the mapping tool by tool, and Migrate Spatial Alteryx Workflows covers packaging the files and validating the result.