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I have a bunch of latitude and longitude data from my GPS running watch, and I want to store that in a DB, I've been reading about GIS but I don't know what does a spatial enabled DBMS like PostGIS allows me to do that simply storing the data as Float wouldn't.

Cœur
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RinoFM
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    It probably will support matching within a specified distance, order by distance, etc. Also, here is a shameless plug for my personal favourite, MongoDB, which is a general DB but supports spatial indexes: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Geospatial+Indexing – P Varga Jan 29 '12 at 04:54
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    PostGIS enables the ability to do geospatial queries that you may not be able to as a float. PostGIS can be used to answer the question 'with elevation and curvature of the earth included, how far did I run between these two points?'. Answer to your question will depend on your intent, if you just want to store and plot...float probably works fine...if you want a fuller set of geospatial functions, PostGIS is where you'll want to go. An 'unplug' MondoDB horribly failed our internal geospatial stress tests, died in about 3 hours of simulated production use. – Twelfth Jan 30 '12 at 19:35

2 Answers2

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A lot will depend on what you want to do with that data. Something like PostGIS will make working with that data a lot easier, depending of course on what your requirements are.

Bart K
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Postgres is optimized for geo-search.

Dan
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