Patent ID: 8527519

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving, at a computing device, a query, wherein said query comprises a constraint defining a bound geographic space, wherein said query comprises a constraint on an attribute of an object; responsive to receiving the query, determining, at the computing device, a set of unique volumetric storage units (VSUs), which are also referred to as voxels, corresponding to the bound geographic space, wherein each of the VSUs represents a volumetric unit of volumetric storage space; determining, at the computing device, a subset of VSU records of a database, wherein each of the VSU records in the subset has a unique VSU identifier for one of the determined VSUs; utilizing, at the computing device, information from the VSU records to determine a set of objects contained in the bound geographic space; determining, at the computing device, a set of feature records for the set of objects, wherein each of the feature records is indexed against a unique object, wherein each of the determined feature records has an storage value for the attribute that satisfies the constraint on the attribute; and creating, at the computing device, a query response for the received query, said query response comprising information from the determined set of feature records; wherein the VSU records are stored in a VSU database, wherein the feature records are stored in a feature database, wherein the VSU database and the feature database together are a hybrid database, wherein said query is a hybrid query.