[gdal-dev] Overriding IRasterIO in class derived from GDALRasterBand

[Mateusz Loskot]

Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> 2009/8/9 Jorge Arévalo <jorge.arevalo at gmail.com>:
>> Then, my point could be, when creating the dataset (Open static 
>> method), perform a query to get all the blocks that cover the
>> extent of the raster (the extent is in RASTER_COLUMNS table) and
>> store them in any place (A new class attribute?, flush the data on
>> a tmp file?). Then, override IRasterIO in Dataset to get the data
>> fetched in the extent query, instead of perform a new call. And
>> override the RasterBand::IReadBlock method too.
>> 
>> It will supppose a change of perspective, but it will improve the 
>> performance, of course.
> 
> Jorge,
> 
> I'm afraid I have not quite followed the discussion of the IRasterIO 
> implementation, but I find the above statement quite alarming. It is
> imperative that we *not* end up reading back all blocks if only a few
> are requested.  Imagine a 100GB image split up into blocks in a
> table.  If an application using GDAL is run and only needs a small
> area of the file it is important that the blocks not requested never
> be pulled from the DB.

I can only second Frank's comment.
IOW, general idea is to query minimum (sub)set of tiles requested,
where request is based on spatial extent (i.e. geographic coordiantes)
or extent within pixel space of a coverage (specified as range of rows
and columns of a raster).

Best regards,
-- 
Mateusz Loskot, http://mateusz.loskot.net
Charter Member of OSGeo, http://osgeo.org