[OSM-dev] XML planets (was Re: New proposed directory layout for planet.openstreetmap.org)

[Christian Vetter]

Hi,

On Fri, Sep 7, 2012 at 9:28 AM, Roland Olbricht <roland.olbricht at gmx.de> wrote:
> 12-24 hours to import planet.osm.bz2 into the database. This contains various optimizations that are fine tuned on the properties of the XML planet structure and maybe gets worse with a differently organised file format.

PBF is actually organized in the very same way the XML file is, so you
could actually use it as a drop-in replacement. The differences are
size, and most important of all, parsing speed. In MoNav I was able to
parse PBF 10 times faster than XML. And since the structure is the
same (elements are in the same order, have the same properties and
tags, etc), it's very easy to abstract from the file format,
supporting both.

Best regards,

Christian Vetter