Re: R-tree, order by, limit

2008/9/22 Mark Cave-Ayland <mark(dot)cave-ayland(at)siriusit(dot)co(dot)uk>:
>>> I am implementing a map application. There are towns with altitude,
>>> longitude and population.
>>> One of the tasks is to be able to query N biggest (by population)
>>> towns within a rectangle.
> Have you considered using PostGIS? (http://postgis.refractions.net). It
> implements the OGC SFS for geometries and is compatible with a large number
> of open source viewers/tools such as Mapserver, Geoserver, QGIS, OGR etc...

Mark, thanks for the suggestion.
I examined PostGIS some time ago. It is too complex for my simple task
and it gives no advantages for me:
For spatial indexing it uses the same GiST-based R-tree.
And PostGIS does not offer that "population" or "priority" queries I need.

Anton.