[postgis-users] some questions about PostGIS internals

[bartvde at xs4all.nl]

Hi list,

I have some questions about PostGIS internals. These are especially about:
"Where does PostgreSQL end and where does PostGIS begin". Sorry in advance
if some questions might seem a bit foolish ...

1) somewhere I read that the GiST indexes in PostgreSQL could only deal
with 1 concurrent user. Is this correct? And did PostGIS make a new
implementation of GiST differing from the PostgreSQL one to overcome this?
How does PostGIS make sure it gets used in the Explain Plan etc. from
PostgreSQL?

2) is the geometry column in PostGIS a real database column? Does it make
use of the Spatial types in PostgreSQL?

3) is there only table level locking or also row level locking (like it
says in the TODO list)? Or did this already get implemented in the
database because of the recent Geoserver development?

Thanks in advance for any answers.

Best regards,
Bart