Working Efficiently with Large Geodata Files using Ad-hoc Queries

Working with large geospatial data such as building models or point clouds typically requires an index structure to enable fast queries. Creating such an index is a time-consuming process. Especially in single-user explorative scenarios, as they are often found in the scientific community, creating an index or importing the data into a database management system (DBMS) might be unnecessary. In this position paper, we show through a series of experiments that modern commodity hardware is fast enough to perform many query types ad-hoc on unindexed building model and point cloud data. We show how searching in unindexed data can be sped up using simple techniques and trivial data layout adjustments. Our experiments show that ad-hoc queries often can be answered in interactive or near-interactive time without an index, sometimes even outperforming the DBMS. We believe our results provide valuable input and open up possibilities for future research.