John Tregea schrieb:
Hi,
I have recently switched to PostgreSQL and had no problem bringing our
existing (my)SQL databases and data into the environment. I am now
extending the functionality of our databases and want to start storing
spatial information.
The information is made up of latitude and longitude coordinates that
define a point or location on the earth's surface. e.g. degrees, minutes
and seconds north/south and degrees, minutes and seconds east/west.
I have read up on custom data types (with input and output functions) in
the docs but am not sure if that is the best way to go. Can anyone point
me to a simple, workable implementation of storing and managing this
type of data or advise me on how to structure a series of fields that
could combine to the required string?
I'd suggest starting w/ the contrib package and its "cube" datatype.
This datatype maintains 3d-coordinates and has long/lat input
and output. In theory if its just storing you could also just store
the longitude, latitude in numeric fields. It really depends on
what you really want to do with that data in the database.
(e.g. what kind of searches you want to do) cube datatype for example
is indexable which really helps in search queries.
Regards
Tino Wildenhain
