[OSM-dev] Fastest way to extract a bounding box

[Benjamin Meier]

Hi,

I'm looking for the fastest way to extract a bounding box from osm-data.
The intention is to get a section (a square of about 5km * 5km)
around a user's current position in a few seconds.

The input-data shall be of the size "germany", "central-europe" or even
the whole planet.

Up to now I made some experiments with unsatisfying results.

I extracted such a bounding-box from "germany.osm.pbf" with osmosis in about
110 seconds. After that I installed a Postgis/Postgresql-DB, filled it 
with the
pbf-file (as described in the wiki: 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Osmosis_PostGIS_Setup)
and extracted the bounding-box with osmosis from the DB in about 53 seconds.

The hardware is a core2duo e7400 with 2GB RAM.

What I would like to know is if there's a significantly faster way to do 
that.

Thanks,
Benjamin