JSpatial :: A Java Spatial Indexing Library

What is JSpatial?

JSpatial is an open source Java library that provides a framework for experimenting with different spatial indexing methods.

JSpatial includes the following main features:

  - Main memory and disk based storage.
  - R-Tree index.
  - B-Tree with multidimentional mapping shemes.
  - C-Squares Spatial Indexing Scheme.
  - Conversions between geospatial coordinate formats.
  - Advanced query cababilities.
  - Complex Shapes.
  - Many parameterization capabilities.

The software is being developed in the context of a "geographically aware" version of the tumba! Portuguese Web search engine, providind the support for spatial indexing of geo-referenced Web pages.

People

JSpatial was developed at the XLDB group of the Department of Informatics of the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon in Portugal.

JSpatial was written by Bruno Martins.

Research

JSpatial is an extensible spatial index library for Java that supports robust spatial indexing methods and has many advanced features. It's main application so far was in the development of a geographically aware search engine, but many more uses are possible.

The software builds on many ideias from other Open-Source projects such as:

  - The Spatial Index Library by Marios H.
  - The "GiMP" package by Rui Zhang et al.
  - The C-Squares spatial indexing system.
  - The Geotools Java GIS toolkit.

Availability

JSpatial is released under the BSD License, which basically states that you can do anything you like with it as long as you mention the authors and make it clear that the library is covered by the BSD License. It also exempts us from any liability, should this library eat your hard disc or kill your cat.

Source code, samples and detailed documentation are provided in the download. The Java API documentation is also available online.

The package is relatively simple install and run. We encourage you to try it out and let us know of any problems you find. We would also be very happy to hear from people who are using this software package.