It shouldn't be possible for any function to work faster than &&, assuming you 
have a spatial index on the geometry column. What do your polygons look like? 
Are then long and snakey? Or generally boxy, and convex? How many polygons are 
there in the set, and how many are usually being selected by your bounding box?

Later,
Chris

Quoting "Menke, Kurt" <kmenke@edac.unm.edu>:

> 
> Hi,
> We are working on a data download page and are giving the user the ability
> to download a subset of the datasets.  We are using the && operator to
> subset the data and it works well with large line data sets, but is quite a
> bit slower on large polygon datasets.  Once the data is subset to a view, we
> are using pgsql2shp.  We are looking for a more efficient method of creating
> the initial subset.   Does anyone know if any of the GEOS functions (or
> other fuctions) would be more efficient than &&?
> 
> We are running PostgreSQL 7.3.2 with PostGIS 0.7.4 support on a Red Hat  9
> box.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Kurt A. Menke
> GIS Analyst/Programmer
> 
> Mailing Address
> Earth Data Analysis Center
> MSC01 1110
> 1 University of New Mexico
> Albuquerque, New Mexico  87131-0001
> 
> Street Address
> University of New Mexico
> Bandelier West, Room 123
> Albuquerque, NM 87131
> 
> Phone:  (505) 277-3622 (ext. 239)
> FAX:  (505) 277-3614
> email:  kmenke@edac.unm.edu
> 
> 





