[postgis-devel] Why doesn't knn work on table1.geom <#>table2.geom

[Nicklas Avén]

Hallo Regina

> Nicklas -- have you tried your tests on the <#>.  That one doesn't do any
> centroid calculations
> so should give the same answer for point and point but different for others.
> I'm not sure if we are always doing a centroid calc even for points,
> but if we are then we might see a difference in performance speed between


Trying:
SELECT a.gid, b.gid, ABS((a.p1<#>b.p1)-(a.p2<->b.p2)) FROM points a,
points b WHERE b.gid =1 ORDER BY ABS((a.p1<#>b.p1)-(a.p2<->b.p2)) DESC
limit 1;

The <#> operator also gives other answers than ST_Distance and
PostgreSQL <->, but different from PostGIS <-> operator. The difference
is about 0.008 units. The timing with <#> operator is slightly worse
than <-> operator (no indexes involved).

I don't think anymore this has anything to to with centroid calc since
that in the bbox case is just dividing the bbox sides by 2.

The difference comes from that the distance is from bboxes instead of
the real geometries. Don't we use double precision bboxes now?

If we don't, that is why. If we do use double precision bboxes it might
be some issue there.

Paul, do you want a ticket or is it expected?

/Nicklas