Use a Topological Transformation for Database Query Processing

[espeed]

You can turn a range query into a box query via this topological transform... Topological Transformation Approaches to Database Query Processing (2015) http://www.cse.msu.edu/~pramanik/research/papers/papers/journalPaper.pdf

To make it work on a B-tree like index on BigTable/Cassandra, you can use something like the The Spatial Location Code (SLC Code) from from this 1996 paper: http://www.gdmc.nl/oosterom/slc.pdf -- you'll want to increase the key size to 64bit keys.

[rfecher]

Thanks @espeed. We had discussed similar optimizations early on in development, but I have not seen that topological transformation paper yet. We'll have to dig deeper but it looks promising.

[espeed]

It sounds like SpaceCurve is using a similar approach: http://www.jandrewrogers.com/2015/10/08/spacecurve/