[postgis-devel] Add BRIN support for geometry and geography datatypes in PostGIS

[Giuseppe Broccolo]

Hello to everybody,

As many of you may know, PostgreSQL has recently introduced in core
starting from version 9.5 a new kind
of index, the Block Range INdex (BRIN). It is specifically thought to be
used in a big data context, where
the GiST index cannot be easily contained in RAM and cannot be properly
used.

We started to add support for geospatial BRIN indexes at last OS Geo code
sprint in Paris this February, and
we've finally cleaned up this patch and documentation and just added a pull
request on the postgis github
repository (​https://github.com/postgis/postgis/pull/106).
Also, we have added a trac issue (
https://trac.osgeo.org/postgis/ticket/3591#ticket).

Since it maybe contains some invasive modification, we're willing to
discuss any issue or design choice that
may be problematic and hopefully get this feature committed.

As regards, we had also the opportunity to do some benchmarking trying to
use the BRIN support for different real cases.
Below you can find some talks made, respectively, at the FOSS4G.NA and at
the FOSS4G.UK this year, reporting
the obtained results with this kind of index. As you can think, this index
can be particularly useful for LiDAR dataset:

http://uk.osgeo.org/foss4guk2016/abstracts.html#brin-indexes-on-geospatial-database

https://2016.foss4g-na.org/sites/default/files/slides/gbroccolo_FOSS4GNA_PGDay2016_brin4postgis.pdf

Let us know which is the best place where to discuss the patch, if here
with the rest of the mailing list people or
within the pull request.

Best regards.
Giuseppe Broccolo, Julien Rouhaud and Ronan Dunklau.

-- 
Giuseppe Broccolo - 2ndQuadrant Italy
PostgreSQL & PostGIS Training, Services and Support
giuseppe.broccolo at 2ndQuadrant.it | www.2ndQuadrant.it
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