Installation might be a bit tricky - the underlying library is written
in C++.  If problems occur (Tree::M is configured for linux, i.e. an
ELF-system using g++ and gcc) you need to change CXX in the Makefile.PL
and/or hack the GiST/Makefile and MT/Makefile themselves.

=============================================================================

NAME
    Tree::M - implement M-trees for efficient "metric/multimedia-searches"

SYNOPSIS
      use Tree::M;

      $M = new Tree::M 

DESCRIPTION
    (not yet)

    Ever had the problem of managing multi-dimensional (spatial) data but
    your database only had one-dimensional indices (b-tree etc.)? Queries
    like

     select data from table where latitude > 40 and latitude < 50
                              and longitude> 50 and longitude< 60;

    are quite inefficient, unless longitude and latitude are part of the
    same spatial index (e.g. an R-tree).

    An M-tree is an index tree that does not directly look at the stored
    keys but rather requires a *distance* (a metric, e.g. a vector norm)
    function to be defined that sorts keys according to their distance. In
    the example above the distance function could be the maximum norm
    ("max(x1-x2, y1-y2)"). The lookup above would then be something like
    this:

       my $res = $M->range([45,55], 5);

    This module implements an M-tree. Although the data structure and the
    distance function is arbitrary, the current version only implements
    n-dimensional discrete vectors and hardwires the distance function to
    the suared euclidean metric (i.e. "(x1-x2)**2 + (y1-y2)**2 + (z1-z2)**2
    + ..."). Evolution towards more freedom is expected ;)

  THE Tree::M CLASS
    $M = new Tree::M arg => value, ...
        Creates a new M-Tree. Before it can be used you have to call one of
        the "create" or "open" methods below.

           ndims => integer
              the number of dimensions each vector has

           range => [min, max, steps]
              min      the lowest allowable scalar value in each dimension
              max      the maximum allowable number
              steps    the number of discrete steps (used when stored externally)

           pagesize => integer
              the size of one page on underlying storage. usually 4096, but
              large objects (ndims > 20 or so) might want to increase this

        Example: create an M-Tree that stores 8-bit rgb-values:

           $M = new Tree::M ndims => 3, range => [0, 255, 256];

        Example: create an M-Tree that stores coordinates from -1..1 with
        100 different steps:

           $M = new Tree::M ndims => 2, range => [-1, 1, 100];

    $M->open(path)
    $M->create($path)
        Open or create the external storage file $path and associate it with
        the tree.

        [this braindamaged API will go away ;)]

    $M->insert(\@v, $data)
        Insert a vector (given by an array reference) into the index and
        associate it with the value $data (a 32-bit integer).

    $M->sync
        Synchronize the data file with memory. Useful after calling "insert"
        to ensure the data actually reaches stable storage.

    $res = $M->range(\@v, $radius)
        Search all entries not farther away from @v then $radius and return
        an arrayref containing the searchresults.

        Each result is again anarrayref composed like this:

           [\@v, $data]

        e.g. the same as given to the "insert" method.

    $res = $M->top(\@v, $n)
        Return the $n "nearest neighbours". The results arrayref (see
        "range") contains the $n index values nearest to @v, sorted for
        distance.

    $distance = $M->distance(\@v1, \@v2)
        Calculcate the distance between two vectors, just as they databse
        engine would do it.

    $depth = $M->maxlevel
        Return the maximum height of the tree (usually a small integer
        specifying the length of the path from the root to the farthest
        leaf)

BUGS
    Inserting too many duplicate keys into the tree cause the C++ library to
    die, so don't do that.

AUTHOR
    Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>.

SEE ALSO
    perl(1), DBIx::SpatialKeys.

