[postgis-users] WKB and WKT

[david.garnier at etudier-online.com]

Quoting "Christina Biakowski (CCGIS)" <christina.biakowski at ccgis.de>:

> Hello,
> the advantages/disadvantages of the different formats for storing
> geometries
> are not quite clear to me.
> I have started with Postgis (associated with UMN Mapserver) recently and
> up
> to now I am using the WKT format.

Internally, Postgis stores data in the WKB format, or something similar.

> What about the advantages of the
> different
> formats? I guess WKB needs less disk space and might be better in
> performance?
It is indeed faster to retrieve data using the WKB format than using the WKT
one. Disk space is only an issue if you store the result of your queries
somewhere on the disk.


> Does the WKB format work with the implemented
> OpenGis-functions
> and UMN Mapserver?

Sorry I don't use MapServer so I don't know.

Best Regards,
David Garnier