[fdo-internals] FDO RFC 16 - FDO Provider for SQLite

[Mateusz Loskot]

Jason Birch wrote:
>  - Store the spatial index in the database.  I don't really understand
> this but maybe something from this discussion is useful:
>    http://readlist.com/lists/sqlite.org/sqlite-users/0/1896.html

Indeed, there are 3 or 4 more threads with Noel about implementing 
spatial feature to SQLite.

Two years ago I worked together with Noel. He implemented spatial 
indexing for SQLite but hasn't chance to publish it but there was some 
plan. Unfortunately, year ago he sold his company GisTek and he is not 
on the market anymore.

> - Although I like the FGF format, I'd be worried that embedding it as
> blob data would close the format.  OGR has an interesting convention for
> using WKT columns with SQLite.  It would be nice if the FDO provider
> could support that approach in addition to the default approach, and
> maybe WKB too?:
>    http://www.gdal.org/ogr/drv_sqlite.html

WKB is not sufficient for that purpose. What is needed here is so called 
"spatial native format" similar to EWKB (EWKT), binary format used 
natively in MySQL. I think, WKT is out of consideration due to 
performance weakness of analysing plain text data.

Summarizing, FGF seems to be good choice as native format for
spatial types.

Greetings
-- 
Mateusz Loskot
http://mateusz.loskot.net