[masklinn]

> That's an application-specific function that shouldn't be bloating a database engine.

GIS most certainly belongs in the database. You don't want to load gigabytes of geo data as points in memory and build and filter geometries in whatever your application is, anymore than you want to load any non-trivial dataset in-memory and do your filtering in your application language.

[blutonium]

Yeah, that's why they're supported in PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, DB2, MSSQL, even SQLite... Multi-dimensional data isn't restricted to the world of GIS, and B-Trees are not up to the task.

[DavidAbrams]

Yeah, I don't do that. I write the math expressions in the queries.