Individual point attributes PostGIS Multipoint

Question

I'm coming from a heavy Esri background and I'm trying to figure out how to create a multipoint feature in a PostGIS database that allows me to set a unique attribute for individual points in a multipoint feature. I've got data that is basically a huge number of XYZ points with an associated reading value (float) that are all grouped. I'd rather not create a database table with individual points as it will quickly baloon into the hundreds of millions of points. I've run databases with around 100 million rows before and it starts to get a little less performant past around 80 million rows in my experience.

I can always toss more hardware at it or implement table partitioning but I'd rather just use a multipoint and never run into issues to begin with.

Answer 1

PostGIS geometry supports coordinates with up to 4 components, X Y Z and M. As an example, this is how you might insert a multipoint with 4 parts for each point:

INSERT INTO geotable ( geom ) 
  VALUES ( GeomFromEWKT('SRID=4326;MULTIPOINT(-126.4 45.32 15 17.2,-125.1 44.2 15.1 14.9)') )