Fastest Way to Find Distance Between Two Lat/Long Points

Question

I currently have just under a million locations in a mysql database all with longitude and latitude information.

I am trying to find the distance between one point a

Answer 1

A fast, simple and accurate (for smaller distances) approximation can be done with a spherical projection. At least in my routing algorithm I get a 20% boost compared to the correct calculation. In Java code it looks like:

public double approxDistKm(double fromLat, double fromLon, double toLat, double toLon) {
    double dLat = Math.toRadians(toLat - fromLat);
    double dLon = Math.toRadians(toLon - fromLon);
    double tmp = Math.cos(Math.toRadians((fromLat + toLat) / 2)) * dLon;
    double d = dLat * dLat + tmp * tmp;
    return R * Math.sqrt(d);
}

Not sure about MySQL (sorry!).

Be sure you know about the limitation (the third param of assertEquals means the accuracy in kilometers):

    float lat = 24.235f;
    float lon = 47.234f;
    CalcDistance dist = new CalcDistance();
    double res = 15.051;
    assertEquals(res, dist.calcDistKm(lat, lon, lat - 0.1, lon + 0.1), 1e-3);
    assertEquals(res, dist.approxDistKm(lat, lon, lat - 0.1, lon + 0.1), 1e-3);

    res = 150.748;
    assertEquals(res, dist.calcDistKm(lat, lon, lat - 1, lon + 1), 1e-3);
    assertEquals(res, dist.approxDistKm(lat, lon, lat - 1, lon + 1), 1e-2);

    res = 1527.919;
    assertEquals(res, dist.calcDistKm(lat, lon, lat - 10, lon + 10), 1e-3);
    assertEquals(res, dist.approxDistKm(lat, lon, lat - 10, lon + 10), 10);