[postgis-users] Geometry column

Markus Schaber schabi at logix-tt.com
Thu Sep 21 04:30:13 PDT 2006


Hi, Wai See,

Lee Wai See wrote:

> Thanks for replying. I was actually referring to something like this
> "010100000011349CEE50F4594066B6381EC462F53F".

This is an efficient machine readable representation of
'POINT(103.817439701598 1.336612814)'. The reasons to do it this way are
partly a compromise between efficency and the technical need for a
"textual" representation, partly the need to avoid coordinate errors due
to different and/or buggy implementations in the floating point parsers,
and partly that we want to be compliant to the OpenGIS model, which
mandates access to the geometries via explicit functions (asText(),
asBinary(), GeometryFromText() etc.).

It may be that having two columns X and Y of type double precision is
better suited for your particular needs.

HTH,
Markus
-- 
Markus Schaber | Logical Tracking&Tracing International AG
Dipl. Inf.     | Software Development GIS

Fight against software patents in Europe! www.ffii.org
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