postgresql-16-pointcloud - 1.2.5-1+b1 main

LIDAR sensors quickly produce millions of points with large numbers of
variables measured on each point. The challenge for a point cloud database
extension is efficiently storing this data while allowing high fidelity access
to the many variables stored.
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Much of the complexity in handling LIDAR comes from the need to deal with
multiple variables per point. The variables captured by LIDAR sensors varies
by sensor and capture process. Some data sets might contain only X/Y/Z values.
Others will contain dozens of variables: X, Y, Z; intensity and return number;
red, green, and blue values; return times; and many more. There is no
consistency in how variables are stored: intensity might be stored in a 4-byte
integer, or in a single byte; X/Y/Z might be doubles, or they might be scaled
4-byte integers.
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PostgreSQL Pointcloud deals with all this variability by using a "schema
document" to describe the contents of any particular LIDAR point. Each point
contains a number of dimensions, and each dimension can be of any data type,
with scaling and/or offsets applied to move between the actual value and the
value stored in the database. The schema document format used by PostgreSQL
Pointcloud is the same one used by the PDAL library.