UI sandbox - area filter

[Ben Wyss]

[et=8h]
[at= 1.5h]

we need a proof of concept area filter for the UI. This should take a polygon of admin level 0 (country level) for example and filter out all traces (in the context of the FE tool) that fall within one of the countries.
This could be don using a PostGIS query generated from Django, or it could be a cql query from JS, or it could be on of the plugins from the GXP library, we'll have to see.

To go further one would need a specific use case.

[Ben Wyss (bmwyss)]

An area filter can be done in a number of ways, it can be done with GeoDjango/PostGIS, it can also be done with the CQL (common query language) which is integrated into the GXP/OpenLayers libraries.
The question becomes what is the exact requirement, and which option will be most efficient.
I found a user posting the later question to the OpenLayers mailing list and should be considered: http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/openlayers-users//2011-August/021812.html
In short: "Spatial filtering in GeoServer is as efficient as in PostGIS"