[postgis-devel] geography_columns + geometry_columns

[Mark Cave-Ayland]

Paul Ramsey wrote:

> This is more of a 2.0 idea, since ideally it depends on having typmod support everywhere, but I am trying to think if there's any reason not to unify geometry_columns and geography_columns into a single view (probably called geometry_columns, but with an extra column to flag type differences for apps that care). 
> 
> In general naive applications that don't understand geography can still treat is at geometry-with-epsg-4326 and get perfectly respectable results, and that's all the metadata table is used for, so... any reason not to add this as a 2.0 task?
> 
> P

For 1.5, I'm definitely quite happy leaving them as separate concepts 
since it's then easy for applications which want to understand geography 
to look inside the geography_columns view as required, and those that 
don't to ignore it. I think this is slightly more relevant now because 
the geography and geometry types have different binary representations.

I think for 2.0 we should raise a proposal through OGC (and maybe the 
PostgreSQL chaps can get us to talking to the SQL/MM committee) so then 
at least we can ensure in the long run that everyone will be taking the 
same approach.

Anyone here a member of the OGC?


ATB,

Mark.

-- 
Mark Cave-Ayland - Senior Technical Architect
PostgreSQL - PostGIS
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