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.

OPTIONS

STORED AS TIFF reads no key. Beacon ignores an OPTIONS clause on this format. See OPTIONS for the formats that do read one.