I work with spatial data, so I will take a stab at answering this.
On Sep 7, 2005, at 2:35 PM, Rajan, Vivek K wrote:
I have a need to store spatial and connectivity data (think verilog
netlist with x, y coordinate information) in a persistence on-disk
file.
I am looking at different SQL-based databases and am wondering if
anyone
has recommendations/opinions on how good SQLite is for:
- Storing spatial data. An examples, documentation and support links
- Performing spatial queries and indexing for very large hierarchical
data set
there is nothing special about spatial data when it comes to storing.
What is special is making sense of it, either when inserting it or when
retrieving it. Unless it is coming from a GPS stream, in which case it
is just a bunch of numbers, spatial data usually describes geographic
features in terms of points, lines, and polygons.
Some trick is involved in converting such spatial features into strings
of linked numbers that can be stored in the database, and then some
more trick is involved in performing spatial queries such as buffers
(SELECT cols FROM tab WHERE somecol IS WITHIN 2 meters OF
someothercol), overlays (SELECT cols FROM tab WHERE somecol IS
CONTAINED IN someothercol), etc. Once you have selected the features,
you need some way to display them -- therein lies the third trick.
What you need is an application layer that (1) performs the above
mentioned tricks; (2) and another application that displays your
results. Such an application layer can be fairly db neutral, as ESRI's
Spatial Data Engine (ArcSDE) is (http://www.esri.com) but it requires
SQL Server or Oracle, or it can be a db-specific implementation such as
PostGIS. PostGIS is a recommended and preferred weapon of choice. As
the name indicates, it works with PostGres, is free and open source,
and is most excellent (http://postgis.refractions.net). Combine PostGIS
with the free and opensource MapServer (http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu)
and you have a most excellent solution. I worked with PostGIS and
MapServer, and I can say the above from firsthand experience.
The latest version of MySQL has built-in spatial capabilities, but I
haven't seen them in action, only in docs, and if you Google, you can
also find a custom MySQL-based spatial data engine that someone wrote.
--
Puneet Kishor
