Saving Full Geometry Information in the Index

Voyager now has the ability to index full geometries rather than simplifying them to a point or a bounding box. As a result, Voyager can provide more accurate spatial search.

For example, when searching in California, parts of Nevada show up in the bounding box, and therefore are included in the search results. With the new indexing strategy, only things that are within the geometry of California will be indexed. Indexing complex geometries does lead to bigger indexes, but ingesting times are only slightly longer and search queries get faster.

Voyager can store spatial information in two ways:

Bounding box (bbox) - a rectangle enclosing the extent of the record
Geometry - the full geometric description of the extent of the record

Voyager always stores a bounding box. Adding a full geometric description provides more accuracy in a spatial search, but takes up more space and increases the physical size of the index.

Enabling Full Geometry Indexing

To enable indexing full geometry:

Go to Manage Voyager > Index > Spatial Settings
Select Store both geometry and bounding box
Click Save