GiST spatial index in PostGIS (Medium capture)¶

Authority: Pedagogy / blog—for index and function semantics use PostGIS reference: PostgreSQL and PostGIS — official documentation primary cluster.

Raw: raw/processed/2026/postgis-gist-spatial-index-medium.md

Summary: Explains GiST for spatial data via bounding boxes / MBRs—why naive cross-joins are expensive and how the index prunes candidate pairs before full geometry tests. Directly relevant to performance of boundary/parcel queries in PostGIS.

Used by

• Data storage (farm and edge stacks)
• Farm data, farmOS, and agriculture lab builds