Geospatial Region Search FAQ

Anthony Roach
Last updated August 24, 2017

MarkLogic 9 introduced Geospatial Region Search, expanding the types of geospatial queries MarkLogic can run.

What is Region Search?

Geospatial Region Search is a new capability used to conduct search queries across different geospatial regions. The following region types are supported:

Region queries can look for overlaps between regions.

When would I use region search?

Any application that needs to understand the relationship between geospatial regions is a candidate. Prior to MarkLogic 9, geospatial queries were only capable of finding points within a region. Now is it possible to compare regions to answer more complex questions. Here are some example use cases:

  • In the last 2 years, which patients lived at an address that was within a 5-mile radius from hospital A and a 10-mile radius from hospital B? What neighborhoods overlap with that region?
  • Which addresses in this neighborhood, excluding the enclosed commercial district, had the highest energy usage?
  • For all trucks with shipping containers containing electronic goods, what California counties did the travel routes pass through?
  • Which travel documents contain memos about Italy, not including the Vatican?

Can I perform Boolean operations on polygons?

An example of a boolean operation is to determine the polygon created the the union, intersection, XOR, etc. of two other polygons.

There is currently no support for Boolean operations on polygons. If you would like to encourage this functionality to be added, please contact your Support representative or write to community-requests@marklogic.com.

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