Once you start investigating SQL Server 2008 spatial features, you quickly discover that there are three problems:
- Loading useful data.
- Writing spatial queries.
- Seeing the results.
It's very easy to experience scope creep while sorting things out. For the absolute novice beginner, it's best to keep things simple. Loading real world datasets is something that can be deferred until a later day. The examples in SQL Server Books Online are simple and demonstrate what can be done. So, to get started, the only missing piece is a tool to let you see the query results visually. Free is a very appealing price point, so I recommend downloading and using Morton Nielsen's free viewer.