[postgis-users] Re: Nitpicking empty geometries

[Rolf A. de By]

Martin, big thanks for your elaboration.  You wrote:

>I don't think that the SFS requires GeometryCollections to be 
>non-empty.  If you think it does, can you provide a page & section number?

In the hope that OGC 99-049 rev 1.1 is still considered a valid reference on this,
section 2.1.2, page 2-4 states "A GeometryCollection is a geometry that is
a collection of 1 or more geometries."

>The reason that intersection() returns GC EMPTY as its null return value 
>is that this is the standard value that JTS/GEOS uses to indicate null 
>returns.

And I was just telling my students today that a null geometry is very
different from an empty geometry in a PostGIS database ;-)  The first
being a "don't know geometry"; the second being empty, as in the distribution
of an extinct biological species.

>It was thought that it was better to have a single "null" 
>value, rather than trying to return an empty geometry of a different 
>type.  (For instance, what would be the null return value for 
>intersection(POLYGON, LINESTRING)?)

I totally agree that a single empty geometry only is what we want and that
it is in line with the apparent strive for uniqueness of geometric objects
in the standards.  (Well, that is how I rationalize some of the correctness
rules for polygons, at least.)

>However, this is a somewhat arbitrary design decision, and it may be 
>that it would better to always have intersection etc. return "the most 
>correct type".  Or perhaps it should return the type of smallest dimension?

I see the point you are making but I'd say that because the result of an
intersection can at least always be viewed as a geocollection, then that
is actually the most appropriate type for the empty result.

My point was that I would expect to see st_geometrytype() then return
"ST_GEOMETRYCOLLECTION" but it does not.

>This would have the advantage that overlay ops would then always return 
>a value which could be used in further overlay ops.

Hmm, that remark makes me wonder whether you aren't giving the answer to
my original question . . . 


Rolf



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