1. A system, the system comprising: a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing an application program interface (API) logic to provide an API associated with publishing and registering a feature type, where the API accepts a first parameter that captures paths in a feature type definition having spatial content, and accepts a second parameter that captures a list of spatial collection related paths that contain spatial collection based content; the feature type comprising: a feature metadata including a set of feature attribute definitions and tag definitions that describe the structure of the feature type, and a spatial collection content metadata including a collection of spatial collection paths comprising a collection of generic spatial collection paths that describe instance specific information of the feature type, a collection of normalized spatial collection paths that describe a hierarchy of spatial elements, and a set of mappings between the feature type and the collection of normalized spatial collection paths, wherein the set of mappings describes an association between the collection of generic spatial collections paths for the feature type and the collection of normalized spatial collection paths; an index logic to produce a spatial index for collection items associated with the spatial collection content metadata, wherein the spatial collection content metadata determines the creation of collection storage tables and the creation of collection storage indices; wherein the API logic selectively processes a data manipulation request associated with feature instance data based, at least in part, on a feature instance data table and a set of collection feature instance spatial content data tables; wherein elements of the feature instance table and elements of the collection table are related by a feature instance primary key value; and wherein the API logic selectively processes a query associated with the feature instance based, at least in part, on the spatial index.