[OSM-talk] Where came the concept of ways, segments, nodes?

[Richard Fairhurst]

Martijn van Oosterhout wrote:

> I don't know exactly (I wasn't there) but I think it came from looking
> at existing datasets which mostly work on the basis of polylines. A
> line consisting of multiple points. Now, that's terribly inefficient,
> so you seperate out the duplication and you get what we have now.

How's it inefficient? I'm curious. I'd have thought that, for the  
purposes of (say) retrieving a way, a polyline model would be much  
easier on the db than the current nodes/segments/ways model.

cheers
Richard