Analytics for the Internet of Things (IoT)

R-tree

R-tree is a spatial indexing method used in both PostGIS and Oracle databases. It leverages the bounding box concept to create a hierarchical index tree. The tree is balanced in the sense that all branches have the same level of nodes. In order to understand how a basic R-tree index is built, we will walk through a simple example.

For a given set of geometries, the MBR for each one is defined. The MBR for each is what is retained in the index. The following image shows an example of these first steps:

MBR for a set of shapes. Source: OSGeo project

The R-tree index is built from the MBRs so that larger bounding boxes contain groups of ...