All,

For App Engine to be considered a platform for custom GIS (outside of
what is current possible with Google Maps) we need to have a robust
mechanism for spatial queries. This is provided by the Java Topology
Suite (JTS). My initial reference application for JTS on App Engine
can be found at http://giscloud.appspot.com (follow the links to the
source code).

The reference application, however, does not employ a spatial index.
This is problematic if our application needs to make repeated spatial
queries on large sets of geometries. Spatial indexes are typically
stored in the file system of the application in question, but under
App Engine we have limited use of the file system. Offline building of
the index also presents some problems.

The only realistic option I have discovered so far is to persist the
spatial index in the App Engine datastore, but the datastore expects
all objects to be serializable and the current JTS indexes are not.
Thus, JTS needs to be modified to permit serializing indexes.

Here is my initial foray into making the STRtree spatial index
serializable:
http://code.google.com/p/giscloud/wiki/SerializedSpatialIndexes

Best regards,
Stuart Moffatt

Ph.D. student ~ http://home.gwu.edu/~sfm
Crisis, Emergency and Risk Management
http://www.gwu.edu/~icdrm
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