i’m working on an application that lets users search for trips from point A to point B.
it needs to solve the following use cases:
- find trips that go from point A to point B
- find trips that start in some other point, but go trough point A to point B
I’m now looking for a database solution that would be best to support such use cases.
For now we are using MongoDB. But i had to figure out a workaround for the first use case and i have a feling that it’s not possible to solve the second use case with it.
It seems to me that all the available noSql dbs that support spatial features allow only for one geospatial index on a document,node etc. This is fine for queries like show me all shops in radius of 5km from this point and the like.
So i’m looking for a solution that could solve both use cases. Is there something like that available?
pgRouting could be used, indeed. First solution, that pops into mind: when first user has entered New York and Columbus as source and destination of his trip, perform routing query and store path as PostGIS linestring geometry.
When second user enters From: Pittsburgh To: Columbus into search form, geocode city names to locations and make PostGIS queries, how far are those points (or city boundaries) from first user’s route path. If they are close enough and first user drives on suitable direction, they could share car.
Second idea: after first user has entered trip details, perform routing query and store all place names, that are passed by route, into database.
Both solutions could be easily implemented with Postgres+PostGIS+pgRouting. Biggest disadvantage of pgRouting is low speed (it’s possible to improve performance by reducing data in routing graph; routing speed is not so important etc). It’s also possible to export road data to external files; use some high-speed routing engines (like OSRM, MoNav etc); and, if necessary, write result back to PostGIS. But this requires definitely much more effort.