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Clustering Lat/Longs in a Database

Asked 2008-12-01T04:36:25.720
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I'm trying to see if anyone knows how to cluster some Lat/Long results, using a database, to reduce the number of results sent over the wire to the application.

There are a number of resources about how to cluster, either on the client side OR in the server (application) side .. but not in the database side :(

This is a similar question, asked by a fellow S.O. member. The solutions are server side based (ie. C# code behind).

Has anyone had any luck or experience with solving this, but in a database? Are there any database guru's out there who are after a hawt and sexy DB challenge?

please help :)

EDIT 1: Clarification - by clustering, i'm hoping to group x number of points into a single point, for an area. So, if i say cluster everything in a 1 mile / 1 km square, then all the results in that 'square' are GROUP'D into a single result (say ... the middle of the square).

EDIT 2: I'm using MS Sql 2008, but i'm open to hearing if there are other solutions in other DB's.

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For movielandmarks.com I used the clustering code from Mike Purvis, one of the authors of Beginning Google Maps Applications with PHP and AJAX. It builds trees of clusters/points for different zoom levels using PHP and MySQL, storing it in the database so that recall is very fast. Some of it may be useful to you even if you are using a different database.

answered 2008-12-01T05:38:49.743

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