The two paths described in this chapter serve different purposes and are both maintained. The raquet path is a self-contained MEOS value type: it carries its pixels and its QUADBIN georeferencing in a single value and needs no PostgreSQL to evaluate, so it is available to every language binding derived from MEOS. The PostGIS raster path offers the far richer raster processing of the postgis_raster extension — map algebra, statistics, resampling, clipping, conversion to polygons — inside PostgreSQL only.
Neither path replaces the other. Work on the raquet path extends what a cloud-native tile can do along a trajectory; it is not an attempt to reimplement raster processing.
The extensions below require a general raster data model, that is, arbitrary spatial reference systems, arbitrary affine georeferencing and several bands per tile. A raquet value is a single-band tile whose extent and pixel grid follow from its QUADBIN cell, so these lie outside that model and remain available through the PostGIS raster path:
Multi-band tiles — one tfloat per band for multi-spectral imagery such as RGB or multi-channel satellite scenes.
Arbitrary spatial reference systems — tiles outside the Web-Mercator grid, and reprojection between reference systems.
Raster processing — map algebra, summary statistics, resampling, and conversion to polygons, together with clipping a tile to a region, such as the extent a set of trajectories visits over a time interval.