I'm in the 'thinking' stages of a GMaps project and wanted to ping this group for ideas before I start writing code. Just like many others are doing, I'll be working with proximity searches based on a given point. My question is, given a point on a map, is there some optimized way of searching for others markers within a radius WITHOUT having to cycle through all markers? Our project has the potential of having several hundred thousand markers, spread over a large area. If I'm only looking for markers within a relatively small radius (say 2 miles out of 500 sq miles), it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to search every possible marker to get the data I need.
So I'm wondering if there is some smarter way of doing this, and speed things up. I thought maybe breaking up the area in overlapping blocks (maybe each block is a 10 sq mile area where 5 miles of it overlaps with the next block in case the point happens to be on the edge of one), then match the given point to the encompassing block and only search that block. I'd like to hear other ideas, if there are any. Or pointers to sample code if something like this already exists. Thanks! -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google Maps API" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-maps-api?hl=en.
