Has any of you had any experience with using NoSQL (non-relational) databases to store spatial data? Are there any potential benefits (speed, space, ...) of using such databases to hold data for, say, a desktop application (compared to using SpatiaLite or PostGIS)?
I've seen posts about using MongoDB for spatial data, but I'm interested in some performance comparison.
Hi there, graphs databases like Neo4j are a very good fit, especially as you can add different indexing schemes dynamically as you go. Typical stuff you can do on your base data is of course 1D indexing (e.g. Timline or B-Trees) or funkier stuff like Hilbert Curves etc, see Nick's blog. Also, for some live demonstration, look at the AWE open source GIS desktop tool here, the underlying indexed graph being visible around time 07:00 .
I've been storing spatial data with ZODB. There's some inherent performance advantage in accessing local file data (spatialite) or unix socket (PostGIS) compared to TCP or HTTP requests (CouchDB etc), surely, but having an spatial index makes the biggest difference. I'm using the same R-trees mentioned in the MongoDB article, but there are plenty of good options. The JTS topology suite has various spatial indexes for Java.