[postgis-users] Using PosGIS in one dimension

[Alvaro Tejero Cantero]

Hello,

I am interested in using some of the spatial operators to implement
the interval algebra operations [1] in one dimension.

My application is tagging of intervals in neurophysiological
recordings, a little bit similar to what people do in genomics.

I would like to know if it is possible, and whether PostGIS is also
optimized for this scenario. A typical query is to retrieve all
intervals of type A that are enclosed in intervals of type B.

A few quick queries didn't return anything, and what I found about the
INTERVAL datatype in Postgres[2] didn't fit our scenario so well,
because they are using DATETIMEs and we need to use integer timestamps
(4-byte integers are enough), as we are sampling time at 20000Hz.

Any comments are appreciated.

Cheers,

-á.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen's_interval_algebra
[2] http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Working_with_Dates_and_Times_in_PostgreSQL