zip distance in a square, not radius

[Xenophobe]

I have successfully created a zip code radius search, but the performance is
unacceptable.

I have two tables. The first is 52K zip codes w/lat and long. The second is
3K national business addresses.

Using the zip code 10010, it takes almost 60 seconds to return 122
businesses within a 25 mile radius. This slowdown is almost entirely due to
the query radius distance formula.

I wonder if someone knows the formula to calculate the distance within a
given square. Would this increase performance? I presume the results would
include zips in the "corners", but performance boost might be worth it.

Thanks in advance.

[Chung Leong]

The trick is to use the box to quickly filter out the ones that can't
possibly satistfy the condition, before doing the more expensive radius
calculation.

First of all, add the latitude and longtitude of each business to the second
table. Since these are going to stay the same through difference searches,
we can do the look up in advance. Be sure to put indexes on the columns.

Using the lat., long. of the zip code provide by the user, calculate the box

$left = $long - $dist; $right = $long + $dist;
$top = $lat + $dist; $bottom = $lat - $dist;

and use it in the query to exclude those businesses outside the box.

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM business
WHERE ($left < long) AND (long < $right)
AND ($bottom < lat) AND (lat < $top);

Now, if you want, you can do a radius check one each row. It's probably
unnecessary though, since you don't actually know precise location of the
user and the businesses.
Uzytkownik "Xenophobe" <xe*******@planetx.com> napisal w wiadomosci
news:sSAZb.91266$jk2.439590@attbi_s53...

I have successfully created a zip code radius search, but the performance is unacceptable.

I have two tables. The first is 52K zip codes w/lat and long. The second is 3K national business addresses.

Using the zip code 10010, it takes almost 60 seconds to return 122
businesses within a 25 mile radius. This slowdown is almost entirely due to the query radius distance formula.

I wonder if someone knows the formula to calculate the distance within a
given square. Would this increase performance? I presume the results would
include zips in the "corners", but performance boost might be worth it.

Thanks in advance.

[Steven C. Gallafent]

"Xenophobe" <xe*******@planetx.com> wrote in message
news:sSAZb.91266$jk2.439590@attbi_s53...

Using the zip code 10010, it takes almost 60 seconds to return 122
businesses within a 25 mile radius. This slowdown is almost entirely due to the query radius distance formula.

I wonder if someone knows the formula to calculate the distance within a
given square. Would this increase performance? I presume the results would
include zips in the "corners", but performance boost might be worth it.

I've got a system where I do something like this, but I precalculate the
distances. Whenever I update the ZIP database, I do something similar to the
following:

1) Calculate the distance (straight-line according to the particular formula
I use) between every pair of ZIP codes.

In my case, I'm only using ZIP codes for Long Island and the five boroughs,
so I've only got a few thousand, resulting in a manageable table. If you did
this for the entire national database, you're talking about LOTS of rows.

The table looks like this:

CREATE TABLE ZIPDistance (
ZIPCode1 DECIMAL(5),
ZIPCode2 DECIMAL(5),
Distance DECIMAL(3)
)

By convention, I always store the "lower" of the two ZIP codes in ZIPCode1.

2) Delete everything in the table where the distance is over my maximum
lookup distance.

You can now quickly get all of the businesses within a certain distance with
a query along these lines:

SELECT * FROM Business WHERE ZIPCode IN
(
SELECT ZIPCode2 FROM ZIPDistance WHERE ZIPCode1 = 11787 AND Distance <= 10
UNION
SELECT ZIPCode1 FROM ZIPDistance WHERE ZIPCode2 = 11787 AND Distance <= 10
UNION
SELECT 11787
)

Note: I'm running on SQL Server for this project, so I can write these sorts
of queries. You'll need to come up with a working method for MySQL. That is
left as an exercise for the interested student. :)

Steve
--
Steven C. Gallafent - The Computer Guy
st***@compguy.com - http://www.compguy.com/

[Xenophobe]

Thank you for your reply.

I discovered the root of my problem was the lack of proper indexing. This
was THE reason for the poor performance, not the query radius calculation
math.

A 25 mile radius search around 10010 that took 60 seconds before, but now
only take 2 seconds.

The moral of this story is index, index, index.

"Chung Leong" <ch***********@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:M_********************@comcast.com...

The trick is to use the box to quickly filter out the ones that can't
possibly satistfy the condition, before doing the more expensive radius
calculation.

First of all, add the latitude and longtitude of each business to the second table. Since these are going to stay the same through difference searches,
we can do the look up in advance. Be sure to put indexes on the columns.

Using the lat., long. of the zip code provide by the user, calculate the box
$left = $long - $dist; $right = $long + $dist;
$top = $lat + $dist; $bottom = $lat - $dist;

and use it in the query to exclude those businesses outside the box.

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM business
WHERE ($left < long) AND (long < $right)
AND ($bottom < lat) AND (lat < $top);

Now, if you want, you can do a radius check one each row. It's probably
unnecessary though, since you don't actually know precise location of the
user and the businesses.
Uzytkownik "Xenophobe" <xe*******@planetx.com> napisal w wiadomosci
news:sSAZb.91266$jk2.439590@attbi_s53...

I have successfully created a zip code radius search, but the performance

is

unacceptable.

I have two tables. The first is 52K zip codes w/lat and long. The second

is

3K national business addresses.

Using the zip code 10010, it takes almost 60 seconds to return 122
businesses within a 25 mile radius. This slowdown is almost entirely due

to

the query radius distance formula.

I wonder if someone knows the formula to calculate the distance within a
given square. Would this increase performance? I presume the results

would include zips in the "corners", but performance boost might be worth it.

Thanks in advance.

[Jochen Daum]

Hi,

On Sat, 21 Feb 2004 04:10:00 GMT, "Xenophobe" <xe*******@planetx.com>
wrote:

I have successfully created a zip code radius search, but the performance is
unacceptable.

I have two tables. The first is 52K zip codes w/lat and long. The second is
3K national business addresses.

Using the zip code 10010, it takes almost 60 seconds to return 122
businesses within a 25 mile radius. This slowdown is almost entirely due to
the query radius distance formula.

What about the suggestion I made last time you asked? It would be
heaps faster, because it doesn't do any calculation

HTH, Jochen
--
Jochen Daum - Cabletalk Group Ltd.
PHP DB Edit Toolkit -- PHP scripts for building
database editing interfaces.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpdbedittk/