GeoTIFF

Read the files

read_tiff(glob_paths)

Beacon reads GeoTIFF and Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFF files.

SELECT * FROM read_tiff('rasters/elevation.tif')

Inspect the schema

Check the columns and the types before you write a query:

SELECT * FROM read_tiff('rasters/*.tif') LIMIT 0;

Inspect a schema compares the _schema functions, SUMMARIZE, DESCRIBE and LIMIT 0, and says what each one costs.

Format details

Beacon supports raster data in GeoTIFF and Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFF (COG) format. A COG file works well over S3. Beacon sends range requests and reads only the tiles that it needs.

Tag attributes

A GeoTIFF file carries TIFF tags and GeoTIFF metadata such as nodata, crs and scale. Beacon shows these per band as extra columns. It uses dot notation: <band>.<attribute>. The nodata tag of the band_1 column becomes band_1.nodata.

An attribute column keeps the type from the file: string, integer, float and so on.

A file tag belongs to no band. Beacon shows it with a leading dot and no band prefix: .<attribute>. The file tag crs becomes the column .crs.

SELECT band_1, "band_1.nodata", "band_1.scale", ".crs"
FROM read_tiff(['rasters/elevation.tif'])
LIMIT 1

As an external table

CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE elevation
STORED AS TIFF
LOCATION 'rasters/elevation.tif'

See Create External Tables for the full DDL. See Data Sources for the full read model.