Re: Box type equality

The Box type is the oldest non-linear type in the Postgres system.
We used it as the template for extensibility in the original system
about thirty years ago. We had R-trees for box indexing. If you want
fuzzy box matching, that seems possible with R-trees and some creativity
by say matching an R-tree with a little larger box and using containment
and maybe also not contained by a smaller box. This is the idea behind
strategies. That you can use existing operations to build a new operation.

If you have to force this onto B-tree's I think you will have to choose
one edge to index on (i.e. one of the four values) then fuzzy match that
through the index and have a secondary condition to further restrict the
matches.

As with all the geometric types, you can use containment boxes for them
and have the secondary condition checks.

It's all just a few lines of code as Stonebraker used to say.

Jeff Anton

On 09/29/15 08:43, Tom Lane wrote:
> Stanislav Kelvich <s(dot)kelvich(at)postgrespro(dot)ru> writes:
>> I've faced an issue with Box type comparison that exists almost for a five years.
>
> Try twenty-five years. The code's been like that since Berkeley.
>
>> That can be fixed by b-tree equality for boxes, but we need some
>> decisions there.
>
> The problem with inventing a btree opclass for boxes is much more
> fundamental than fuzzy comparisons, unfortunately. Btree requires a
> linear sort order, and there's no plausible linear ordering of boxes,
> unless you compare areas which won't give the equality semantics you want.
>
> We could perhaps invent an exact-equality operator and construct just
> a hash opclass for it, no btree.
>
> In any case I think it would be a mistake to consider only boxes; all
> the built-in geometric types have related issues.
>
> regards, tom lane
>
>