Re: Indexing a field of type point

David Cottingham <david(dot)cottingham(at)cl(dot)cam(dot)ac(dot)uk> writes:
> I have a table containing a field named location, of type point, i.e. a
> position in two dimensions. The table has several million records in, and I
> need to extract those records whose location value is contained within a
> certain bounding box.

Given the standard opclasses, your best bet is to convert the point into
a zero-volume box or circle, eg

create index i on t using gist (circle(pointcol,0))

and then express queries as "circle(pointcol,0) overlaps target-box".

PostGIS might have something more nicely adapted ...

regards, tom lane