Microsoft Maps Out Largest Online Atlas

June 24, 1998 (12:00 AM EDT)

Where do you go to find a trillion bytes of compressed aerial and satellite Earth photos?

Where else but the world's largest database on the Web, Microsoft TerraServer. The site will be officially launched Wednesday as part of Federal Enterprise Day.

It's the planet's largest and most detailed atlas, said a spokesman for Microsoft (company profile), the Redmond, Wash.-based software powerhouse. To build the site, Microsoft hooked up with Compaq, Aerial Images, the U.S. Geological Survey, Legato Systems, and Storage Technology.

The site contains more than 4 terabytes (4 trillion bytes) of compressed photos.

How big is that? It's bigger than all the HTML pages already on the Internet, officials said.

Microsoft TerraServer contains more data than 1 billion business letters a month.

The huge site will be powered by a prerelease version of Microsoft SQL Server version 7.0 Enterprise Edition and the Windows NT Server operating system Enterprise Edition.

Aerial Images is providing the Spin 2 high-resolution satellite and digital imagery, which it acquired from SovinformSputnik, a branch of the Russian Space Agency.

Houston-based Compaq is supplying hardware for the powerful website with a Compaq 64-bit AlphaServer 8400 system.