On Thu, Jan 26, 2006 at 12:55:46 -0500,
George Woodring <george.woodring@iglass.net> wrote:
> I am looking for suggestions on storing and retrieving geocode
> information.
>
> My application currently stores 2 columns (lat, long) as numeric and I
> have a btree index on them. This works fine for the current set of
> data, but as it expands I know it will become an issue.
>
> I am looking at changing the index to an rtree, but I did not know if it
> is better to create a point column or if I could use the existing
> lat/long columns.
>
> The query will always be to select points inside a box.
If you don't want to use PostGIS, you could also use contrib/earthdistance.
The 'earth' domain uses the cube data type to represent points on the
surface of the earth (modelled as a perfect sphere). There is a GIST index
available for cube, so searches should be reasonably fast.