11.4.9 Creating Spatial Indexes

For InnoDB and MyISAM tables, MySQL can create spatial indexes using syntax similar to that for creating regular indexes, but using the SPATIAL keyword. Columns in spatial indexes must be declared NOT NULL. The following examples demonstrate how to create spatial indexes:

• With CREATE TABLE:

  CREATE TABLE geom (g GEOMETRY NOT NULL, SPATIAL INDEX(g));

• With ALTER TABLE:

  CREATE TABLE geom (g GEOMETRY NOT NULL);
  ALTER TABLE geom ADD SPATIAL INDEX(g);

• With CREATE INDEX:

  CREATE TABLE geom (g GEOMETRY NOT NULL);
  CREATE SPATIAL INDEX g ON geom (g);

SPATIAL INDEX creates an R-tree index. For storage engines that support nonspatial indexing of spatial columns, the engine creates a B-tree index. A B-tree index on spatial values is useful for exact-value lookups, but not for range scans.

For more information on indexing spatial columns, see Section 13.1.14, “CREATE INDEX Statement”.

To drop spatial indexes, use ALTER TABLE or DROP INDEX:

• With ALTER TABLE:

  ALTER TABLE geom DROP INDEX g;

• With DROP INDEX:

  DROP INDEX g ON geom;

Example: Suppose that a table geom contains more than 32,000 geometries, which are stored in the column g of type GEOMETRY. The table also has an AUTO_INCREMENT column fid for storing object ID values.

mysql> DESCRIBE geom;
+-------+----------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field | Type     | Null | Key | Default | Extra          |
+-------+----------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| fid   | int(11)  |      | PRI | NULL    | auto_increment |
| g     | geometry |      |     |         |                |
+-------+----------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> SELECT COUNT(*) FROM geom;
+----------+
| count(*) |
+----------+
|    32376 |
+----------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

To add a spatial index on the column g, use this statement:

mysql> ALTER TABLE geom ADD SPATIAL INDEX(g);
Query OK, 32376 rows affected (4.05 sec)
Records: 32376  Duplicates: 0  Warnings: 0