tiling shape files, or shptree

[Dylan Beaudette]

Hi,

i have some rather large shapefiles, and i am wondering what the best
optimization techniques to use:

for example: i have a statewide local roads shapefile (TIGER  2000). this
layer is not enabled until the user is zoomed in quite a bit. will i get
faster map rendering times if i :

1. tile the statewide coverage into small rectangles

2. use shptree to create a spatial index

3. do both

if tiling is the best option, does anyone have any suggestions for doing this
with opensource tools? i was thinking about creating a regular grid in GRASS,
and then using ogr2ogr to extract parts of the local roads shapefile based on
the geographic extrents of the regular grid.

any ideas?

thanks!

--
Dylan Beaudette
Soils and Biogeochemistry Graduate Group
University of California at Davis
530.754.7341