> I say, go ahead.  At least your experiences can prime the pumps of the
> design process.  Easier than designing in a vacuum.

I think we need two new relations, and one modifier:

encloses        Data is range, term is point/range
within          Data is point, term is range
      /partial


Encloses finds items where the term is enclosed by the item.  Eg
  countries encloses "washington dc" -> "USA"
Within is the other way round:
  cities within "USA" -> [long list of US cities]
Partial means that the enclosing isn't necessarily complete.  For example
search for countries that enclose partially an area around the great lakes
will return USA and Canada, even though neither enclose the area fully.

For coordinates:
geo.countryCoordinates encloses "37-00-00N,101-54-00W"
  Find me countries that fully enclose the point
geo.countryCoordinates encloses "37-00-00N,101-54W 37-00-30N,101-54-30W"
  Find me countries that fully enclose the area
geo.countryCoordinates encloses/partial "..."
  Find me countries that have at least some overlap with the area

Also applicable to time:

war.battleTimes encloses "1350-05-08T00:00:00"
  Find me battles which were happening at the given time
war.battleTimes encloses/partial "1350-05-08T00:00:00 1350-05-09T00:00:00"
  Find me battles that have some overlap with the given duration
etc.

I'm unsure about the utility of notWithin/notEncloses.  It's possible to
generate them using boolean not, but you need an 'alwaysMatches' for the
other boolean operand.

Index Set(s):

There's a bazillion access points in the geo profile. Most of which I
don't understand, and hopefully not to offend anyone, but most of which
don't look useful. eg Browse Graphic File Description (3139) or Universal
Polar Stereographic (3436)

Useful to me would be:

Time/Space indexes:
  latitude
  longitude
  altitude
  point
  region
  date
  duration
  distance
  velocity
  direction
  arc [eg range of directions]

Additional Weather indexes:
  [visibility = distance]
  distance_vertical [ = vertical visibility]
  [velocity = wind speed]
  [direction/arc = wind direction]
  temperature
  pressure
  temperature_dewpoint
  pressure_seaLevel
  precipitationType
  precipitationAmount
  cloudAltitude
  cloudType
  cloudAmount


Rob

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