7.3. Index Overview

GeoMesa uses a number of different indices in order to satisfy various search predicates. Each index has an identifier (in brackets) which is used to reference it in configuration options.

By default, GeoMesa will create several indices based on the default geometry and date. For advanced use cases, the indices may be specified through Customizing Index Creation.

  • z2 - the Z2 index uses a two-dimensional Z-order curve to index latitude and longitude for point data. This index will be created if the feature type has the geometry type Point. This is used to efficiently answer queries with a spatial component but no temporal component.

  • z3 - the Z3 index uses a three-dimensional Z-order curve to index latitude, longitude, and time for point data. This index will be created if the feature type has the geometry type Point and has a date attribute. This is used to efficiently answer queries with both spatial and temporal components.

  • xz2 - the XZ2 index uses a two-dimensional implementation of XZ-ordering 1 to index latitude and longitude for non-point data. XZ-ordering is an extension of Z-ordering designed for spatially extended objects (i.e. non-point geometries such as line strings or polygons). This index will be created if the feature type has a non-Point geometry. This is used to efficiently answer queries with a spatial component but no temporal component.

  • xz3 - the XZ3 index uses a three-dimensional implementation of XZ-ordering 1 to index latitude, longitude, and time for non-point data. This index will be created if the feature type has a non-Point geometry and has a date attribute. This is used to efficiently answer queries with both spatial and temporal components.

  • id - the ID index uses feature ID as the primary key. It is used for any query by ID. Additionally, certain attribute queries may end up retrieving data from the ID index.

  • attr - the attribute index uses attribute values as the primary index key. This allows for fast retrieval of queries without a spatio-temporal component. The attribute index includes a secondary spatio-temporal key that can improve queries with multiple predicates.

Footnotes

1(1,2)

Böhm, Klump, and Kriegel. “XZ-ordering: a space-filling curve for objects with spatial extension” 6th. Int. Symposium on Large Spatial Databases (SSD), 1999, Hong Kong, China.