I am working on Android app for locating food places in my city.
Using Google Map v2 api.
App shows user his current location, and the closest food spots around him.
I want to store location coordinates in an online database, and App should retrieve data
in JSON format from db to phone.
I am familiar with PHP and MySql.
Which database should i use to store locations ?
Is MySql good for that purpose ?
How will i store location data in it?
Best Answer
If you are 100% sure that requirements are not going to change, and you just need to store the coordinates of the points, then yes, go ahead and save the data in a MySQL database, as two double columns.
But if there is even a little chance that the scope can increase, then I'll suggest that you spend some time setting up a PostGIS database and save the data in it as Geometric points.
Most projects suffer from feature-creep, and before you know it, you will have to do Geometric operations in the database, like getting points in a certain polygon, or finding distances and so on. If your data is in a PostGIS database, all of this will be very simple.