what is a good database/approach for storing and querying geometric path data

Question

I'm working on a project that tracks blobs (people). We want to track their xy position, turn this into some representation of their traversed path, and do queries that return things like "which paths are near a point (a,b)" or "which paths began from (0, b)" or "which paths enter a circle centered at (a,b) with radius r," etc.

I've googled around and seen GIS implementations like PostGIS and SpatiaLite. I'm looking for other "namedrops" that I can look into, or personal experience with a particular solution that worked well for you.

Edit: it may be relevant to mention that I'm coding using openFrameworks, a c++ based library designed for coding artistic applications. I am working with a setup that uses a projector and camera setup to project interactive applications onto a floorspace. My working environment is code::blocks on windows. answers from people who have worked with openframeworks is a plus!

Answer 1

At the C library level you might just want to use Geos, a library for doing geometric ops of the kind you mention. Postgis is ideal if you want to store geo data, but might be overkill for your use. Geos is a port of JTS, which is java.

Answer 2

Given the requirements of the project, it was decided that Spatialite was a good choice, especially because it is a mere extension of Sqlite, which is already supported by openframeworks through community developed addons. Another alternative would be postgis, if we wanted to use a database management system that was more sophisticated than sqlite.

Spatialite supports many GIS operations. In particular, our project could make good use of the "intersection" and "crosses" queries.