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SQL Server 2008 has Spatial Support.

They also let you perform spatial operations/queries. You can even store GPS 'polygons' and perform queries such as find ones that overlap, find the polygon which covers a specific point, etc. The spatial query support is amazing.

Indexing the Geography datatype is also supported.

http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/spatial-data.a...

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I'm hoping to use PostgreSQL (because I'm using Heroku;) ), but I read up on how MS Sql Server implements spatial indexes. Basically, it recursively divides the coordinate system into quadrants. Then, when looking for a range of coordinates, it can figure out which quadrants are covered by that range and efficiently query them using b-trees. Very cool. I wonder if PostgreSQL spatial support works similarly...

Use PostGIS!

Heroku supports it -> http://www.mail-archive.com/heroku@googlegroups.com/msg04556...

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