Re: 4D Geometry

On Mon, 2005-09-05 at 15:27 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:

> Chris Traylor <ctraylor(at)phalanyx(dot)com> writes:
> > 1.) Is anyone else currently working on this?
>
> No, and AFAIR no one has ever even asked for it. I'm a little dubious
> about doubling the storage requirements for geometry data and likely
> creating backwards-compatibility issues to implement a feature that only
> you need. I'd suggest keeping these as separate private types rather
> than expecting that a patch to replace the 2D types will be accepted.

What do you think about making it a configure option, i.e.
--enable-4D-geometry (default false)? This way people who don't
want/need the extra overhead don't have to deal with it, and those who
want to use postgres for scientific/engineering/animation/etc apps
(where 2D doesn't quite cut the mustard) can have it available to them.
I was thinking that it would allow a whole new set of applications to
take advantage of the fact that postgres provides native geometric
types. After all, you can use just about any db engine to handle
geometric data with traditional sql and stored procedures. The point of
the builtins is so you have a standard set of algorithms, and that you
don't have to constantly reinvent the wheel. Like I said in my earlier
message, I can patch the source for myself, and go about my merry way.
The geometry portions really don't seem to change very frequently (the
differences between 8.0.3, and 8.1beta were minimal), and except for the
line stuff, the changes were trivial, so personal maintenance shouldn't
be a problem. I just thought I'd share my work.:-)

>
> regards, tom lane
>
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Chris

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