A spatial data infrastructure (SDI) is an infrastructure for integration, transportation, and distribution of spatial data via Web services using service-oriented architectures (SOA) and business process patterns. Therefore, it supplies applications with spatial products. A product might be a data set, a service, or a combination of the two.

This entry describes the characteristics of the payload spatial data, gives a historical context, introduces roles and fundamental processes, and illustrates them with technical example architecture, including data, query, and service models.