What's the use of the table extended_geometry_columns in PostGIS

Question

Sometimes my PostGIS database creates a extended_geometry_columns table. After some search i've not found what is the use of this table.

I'm using PostgreSQL 8.4 and PostGIS 1.3.3

This is the definition of the table

CREATE TABLE extended_geometry_columns (
    f_table_schema character varying(265) NOT NULL,
    f_table_name character varying(256) NOT NULL,
    x_min double precision,
    y_min double precision,
    x_max double precision,
    y_max double precision,
    CONSTRAINT extended_geometry_columns_pkey PRIMARY KEY (f_table_schema, f_table_name)

);

AFAIK the only tools that are connecting to the database are pgadmin3/psql, gvSIG, and some custom python scripts (that i'm sure not create the table).

Thanks

Answer 1

Whatever it is, it's not PostGIS creating it. I've just downloaded the source for 1.3.3 (you really should be using a more up-to-date version...)

Unzipped it:

tar xzf postgis-1.3.3.tar.gz
cd postgis-1.3.3

and grepped for _geometry_column:

grep _geometry_column -iR *

And apart from a few references to the function fix_geometry_columns() and probe_geometry_columns() nothing has come up.

What other software are you using on this database? Like you, I found Google only turned up links to this question, so it may be that if you are using closed-source software like ArcGIS, it is something that software adds to speed up some process or other.