IMHO, (to cut a long story short :) Amazon RDS is more than enough for most geo location applications.

Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) is a web service that makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud.

Amazon RDS gives you access to the full capabilities of a familiar MySQL database. This means the code, applications, and tools you already use today with your existing MySQL databases work seamlessly with Amazon RDS.

Two preliminary steps:
* Start a small DB instance with the kind help of AWS management console (image above)
* Use the RDS instance as if it is your “disruptive”  MySQL instance e.g. manage it using MySQL Workbench 5.2.29

“Flirting” with MySQL spatial capabilities (which seems to be “fully” supported by AWS RDS)

* Create the (MyISAM) Table with spatial index

CREATE TABLE `locations` (
`id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`lat` decimal(10,6) DEFAULT NULL,
`long` decimal(10,6) DEFAULT NULL,
`loc` point NOT NULL,
`name` varchar(45) DEFAULT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
SPATIAL KEY `loc` (`loc`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM AUTO_INCREMENT=6 DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8

* Insert few values to populate your table

INSERT INTO locations VALUES(1,40.748433, -73.985655, GeomFromText(‘POINT(40.748433 -73.985655)’), ‘The Empire State Building‘);
INSERT INTO locations VALUES(2, 40.689166, -74.044444, GeomFromText(‘POINT(40.689166 -74.044444)’), ‘The Statue of Liberty’);
INSERT INTO locations VALUES(3, 40.758611, -73.979166, GeomFromText(‘POINT(40.758611 -73.979166)’), ‘Rockefeller Center’);
INSERT INTO locations VALUES(4, 40.757266, -73.985838, GeomFromText(‘POINT(40.757266 -73.985838)’), ‘Times Square’);
INSERT INTO locations VALUES(5, 40.7527, -73.9818, GeomFromText(‘POINT(40.7527 -73.9818)’), ‘New York Public Library’);

* Execute a simple test drive query which returns all the locations and their distance from ‘The Empire State Building’ + Comparing two distance calculation methods (1) MySQL euclidean calculation (2) Haversine calculation (results below)

SELECT locations.name,
astext(locations.loc),
GLength(LineStringFromWKB(LineString(locations.loc, GeomFromText(‘POINT(40.748433 -73.985655)’))))*100
AS euclidean,
6378.1 * 2 * ASIN(SQRT(
POWER(SIN(RADIANS(40.748433 – locations.lat) / 2),2) +
COS(RADIANS(40.748433)) * COS(RADIANS(locations.lat) )
* POWER(SIN((RADIANS(-73.985655 – locations.long)) /2), 2) )) AS haversine
FROM locations
— HAVING euclidean < 1
– ORDER BY euclidean ASC LIMIT 10;

Two Surprises/Issues

(1) SRID (Spatial Reference Identifier) support in MySQL is a disgrace – In MySQL, the SRID value is just an integer associated with the geometry value. All calculations are done assuming Euclidean (planar) geometry.

Possible Workarounds: (1) Euclidean calculation can be enough (2) Use Haversine function if you need the accuracy

(2) MySQL ‘Where’ clause can’t use column aliases for filtering

Possible Workarounds: (1) Use ‘Having’ clause (see above) (2) Use the explicit function or field and not the alias

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

Related/Interesting reference - Geo Distance Search with MySQL (Presentation | 2008)

Important note: To help new AWS customers get started in the cloud, AWS is introducing a new free usage tier. Beginning November 1, new AWScustomers will be able to run a free Amazon EC2 Micro Instance for a year, while also leveraging a new free usage tier for Amazon S3, Amazon Elastic Block Store, Amazon Elastic Load Balancing, and AWSdata transfer – Very Exciting Times!!!

Disturbing unrelated fact: Starting in 1931, every graduate of the Japanese Naval Academy was asked: “How would you carry out a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor?”

I was very curios to take AWS for a quick test drive so I lost six hours of a precious beauty sleep and compiled this blog-post-capsule for future generations.

The Quest

* Run an “Hello World!!!1” Servlet on EC2 (less than $0.01 per hour)
* Create a local development environment using Eclipse + AWS Toolkit for Eclipse (seems like a really interesting toolchain)

Preliminary Steps

Issues with AWS Toolkit defaults

Plan B – Create a custom EC2 AMI with Tomcat 6.something and JDK 1.6

* Launch an EC2 instance using Amazon’s ami-84db39ed AMI.  (basic Fedora 8 image)
* Use Putty connect to your instance

* Install Java on EC2 Instance

* Download JDK (“Linux RPM in self-extracting JDK file”)

mkdir /usr/local/java

cd /usr/local/java

curl http://download.java.net/jdk6/6u23/promoted/b01/binaries/jdk-6u23-ea-bin-b01-linux-i586-30_aug_2010-rpm.bin > jdk1.6.0.23-rpm.bin

chmod 755 jdk1.6.0.23-rpm.bin # Change the permission of the file

./jdk1.6.0.23-rpm.bin #Install

updatedb; locate javac | grep bin  # this step merely serves to verify the installation

/usr/sbin/alternatives –install /usr/bin/java java /usr/java/jdk1.6.0_23/bin/java 100

/usr/sbin/alternatives –install /usr/bin/jar jar /usr/java/jdk1.6.0_23/bin/jar 100

/usr/sbin/alternatives –install /usr/bin/javac javac /usr/java/jdk1.6.0_23/bin/javac 100

/usr/sbin/alternatives –config java # Change the default JVM from gcj to Sun’s version (if needed)

* Install Tomcat on EC2 Instance

mkdir /usr/tomcat

cd /usr/tomcat

curl http://apache.spd.co.il//tomcat/tomcat-6/v6.0.29/bin/apache-tomcat-6.0.29.tar.gz > apache-tomcat-6.0.29.tar.gz

tar zxvf apache-tomcat-6.0.29.tar.gz

cd apache-tomcat-6.0.29

bin/startup.sh  # Start Tomcat

#!/bin/sh

# Tomcat init script for Linux.

#

# chkconfig: 2345 96 14

# description: The Apache Tomcat servlet/JSP container.

JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/jdk1.6.0_23

CATALINA_HOME=/usr/tomcat/apache-tomcat-6.0.29

export JAVA_HOME CATALINA_HOME

exec $CATALINA_HOME/bin/catalina.sh $*

chmod 755 /etc/rc.d/init.d/tomcat

chkconfig –level 2345 tomcat on

Are we there yet?

vi ~/.bash_profile

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/jdk1.6.0_23

export CATALINA_HOME=/usr/tomcat/apache-tomcat-6.0.29

ln -s /usr/java/jdk1.6.0_23/ /env/jdk

ln -s /usr/tomcat/apache-tomcat-6.0.29/ /env/tomcat

What next?

protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {

response.getWriter().println(“Hello World!!!1″);

}

That’s it – I hope this will help, it does take approx. 1 hour so if you know some other way to make it work, please don’t be shy and comment.

Additional references I used to make it this far:

Free VI Tip for Dummies

For your convenient, I have collected few cloud-buzz-quotes to  spice your cloud computing elevator pitch:

• According to Gartner: “Cloud computing heralds an evolution of business that is no less influential than e-business”

• IDC on Cloud Computing: “This is about the IT industry’s new model for the next 20 years“, Vernon Turner, head of enterprise infrastructure, consumer and telecoms research.

• Merrill Lynch estimates that by 2012, the annual global market for cloud computing will surge to $95 billion and that 12% of the worldwide software market would go to the cloud in that period.

• In January of 2008 Amazon announced that the Amazon Web Services now consume more bandwidth than do the entire global network of Amazon.com retail sites…

• “… the new computing cloud age” Eric Schmidt (April, 2008)

Do you happen to have more???