Shape looks like big Square in SQL Server 2008

Question

I was provided with a polygon defined in WKT which has 4741 points and am able to insert it as a geography data type within a database in SQL Server 2008. However, when I view it using the spatial viewer it takes up the entire viewer and looks like a large rectangle. When I look at the same shape in Quantum GIS the shape looks like what I would expect (it is kind of a funky shape). I executed the STNumGeometries() method on the geography shape in SQL Server and it returned 1 so SQL Server thinks it is valid, but does not appear to be able to correctly understand the shape. Is there anything obvious that could be causing this issue?

The boundaries of the shape should be something like:

-89.25521,39.22638
-87.49851,38.84994
-87.97533,38.21419
-89.17156,38.11799
-89.25521,39.22638

What I'm seeing in the SQL Server Spatial viewer is:

-180, 81
180, 81
180, -90
-80, -90
-180, 81

Any assistance woudl be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

It appears that the object I was provided was defined "inside-out" and that in order to get it to show up properly, I need to use the ReorientObject() method to fix my shape. I found this information on a blog post by Alastair Aitchison http://alastaira.wordpress.com/2012/01/27/ring-orientation-bigger-than-a-hemisphere-polygons-and-the-reorientobject-method-in-sql-server-2012/. He provided the following code to properly display the data:

SELECT   
    CASE
        WHEN 
            geog4202.EnvelopeAngle() >= 90 THEN geog4202.ReorientObject()
        ELSE 
            geog4202    
     END AS geog4202  
 FROM rbasin_polygon; 

I found this information on the "The Solution" section of his article.