PL/PGSQL Pseudo Cascade Union Aggregate Function

The Pseudo Cascade Union aggregate function is intended as a drop in replacement for the current PostGIS ST_Union aggregate function. It should work in PostGIS versions 1.2.2 — 1.3.4. Although I have only tested on 1.3.3 and 1.3.4SVN. Seems to work in general 5-10 times faster than built in ST_Union, but I haven't really hammered it to ensure it achieves the desired result in all cases. NOTE: For PostGIS 1.4 with GEOS 3.1.0 this is not necessary since cascaded Union is built into GEOS 3.1+ and PostGIS 1.4+ can take advantage of it

In general I have found it to be 5-10 times faster than the built-in ST_Union aggregate function and also it finishes to completion in many cases where the built-in one runs out of memory.

The code can be downloaded from ​http://www.bostongis.com/downloads/upgis_cascadeunion_functions_plpgsql.zip

It is loosely based on the concepts used in JTS 1.9 Union Operator (aka Cascaded Union) which is described at

​http://lin-ear-th-inking.blogspot.com/2007/11/fast-polygon-merging-in-jts-using.html

Example use:

This completes in 47,578 ms = 0.75 minutes

  SELECT state, upgis_cascadeunion(the_geom) as new_geom,
   SUM(ST_NPoints(the_geom)) As  numpointsbefore,
     ST_NPoints(upgis_cascadeunion(the_geom)) As numpointsafter
   FROM usstatebounds
   GROUP BY state
   ORDER BY state;

vs. Original ST_Union version - 830,625 (13.8 minutes)

  SELECT state, ST_Union(the_geom) as the_geom,
   SUM(ST_NPoints(the_geom)) As  numpointsbefore,
     ST_NPoints(ST_Union(the_geom)) As numpointsafter
   FROM usstatebounds
   GROUP BY state
   ORDER BY state;