[OSM-dev] Hierachical search of sea tiles (was:disk usage...)

[OJW]

On Wednesday 02 May 2007 16:34, Martijn van Oosterhout wrote:
> You're surely not proposing that the DB check
> level-17, then 16, then 15 all the way to level 12 until it gets a
> hit?

I would like to propose this, if it hasn't been already.  If a tile is marked 
"all-sea", then that information applies to all subtiles, and the handler 
does a search 'upwards' through the zoom levels. 

It's a form of compression - one z-7 tile could cover most of an ocean (saving 
tens of thousands of files|rows), and as you get closer to the coastline the 
sea tiles get smaller and smaller to fill the gaps until they hit coastline.

The worst-case is about 10 [database] lookups, and that's if you're browsing 
at z-17 in the centre of an ocean.  The closer you are to a coast (i.e. 
somewhere worth browsing), the fewer lookups it will need.

Compared to a fixed-format binary file, it has the advantage of being sparse 
(no need to store _every_ z-17 sea tile, only the ones where they're needed 
to fill a curvy coastline)