Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

I have a FreeBSD box in my closet (I felt like playing with FreeBSD this weekend) currently running Postgres 9 and PostGIS which is how my current stuff is working.

It's actually pretty rad to have every single location I've ever checked-into via Facebook stored in this database. I can say "find all the spots 2 miles from my house" and it's shockingly quick.

I have PostgreSQL on my mac. It's easy to install and use.

PostGIS was the killer. Version 2.0 (homebrew installs postgis2) does not play nice with Django locally (on my mac) and the ticket has been open for a year or something to fix it. That's a huge red flag for me right there. https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/16455

I guess I could install 1.5 manually.

My problem with trusting Ruby/Rails is that I've only been seriously developing in it for a month.



Okay, but thats more a Django problem then a PostGIS problem.

Lets put it like that: feel free to try some new stuff, but don't start getting all crazy with it. So, if you tried Rails and weren't that convinced by it, maybe default to something that you know, even if it isn't a love relationship. Learning is a great thing, but do it piece by piece, especially if your goal is getting work done.


How quick exactly?

I've been testing ElasticSearch's geo location search and most queries take 50-150ms.

Standard term searches and filters will take like 5ms, with id GETs taking mere fractions of that still.


Well, compared to your numbers, I guess not that quick. Django is responding in 0.28 seconds. That is going over wifi to my server in a closet though. And i'm downstairs kinda far from the router.

Screenshot: http://wsld.me/J5zu

If I hit it repeatedly for a while it comes back in as quick as 0.14, but usually not that fast.

ping to server:

    michael at Achilles in ~
    ○ ping -c 5 apollo 
    PING apollo (192.168.1.130): 56 data bytes
    64 bytes from 192.168.1.130: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=9.497 ms
    64 bytes from 192.168.1.130: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=83.113 ms
    64 bytes from 192.168.1.130: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=7.335 ms
    64 bytes from 192.168.1.130: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=6.998 ms
    64 bytes from 192.168.1.130: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=6.393 ms

    --- apollo ping statistics ---
    5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
    round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 6.393/22.667/83.113/30.241 ms


I'd call it good enough, I was of the understanding that SQL database geo plugins were usually miserable. I'll add a mental exception for Postgres.


I used PostGIS in proper GIS scenarios and it was faring quite well. The advantage of PostGIS is that it supports all the index types you need directly. And been around awhile, in a good sense.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: