Hi @der , 

I totally understand the challenge you are facing, not all use cases can get helped with the workarounds. I see you have tagged the authors of https://www.databricks.com/blog/introducing-spatial-sql-databricks-80-functions-high-performance-geo... in the original query. I will have a quick chat with them. 

In addition, I would also request you to have this discussion with your Account Executive (AE) and they can also request with the product team on prioritization of the feature.

TBH, there is a good adoption, and many customers are requesting for this feature, I do believe this should be out soon, but on ETA, I can update you after the internal discussion.

Thanks!