Finding Distance between two zipcodes with longtitude and latitude

Question

Want to find distance between two zipcodes that have their latitude and longitude stored in a table.
The table is as follows
CREATE TABLE distance (zipcode VARCHAR2, LNG NUMBER, LAT NUMBER)
I couldn't come up with a calculation or understand the mathematical calculation on line.. Can you help me with some stored procedure that will do..?
Thanks

Answer 1

There is no logical complexity in your query besides knowing the basics of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_coordinates
Also, the table name "Distance" cannot be more confusing; what you have is essentially "PointsOnSphere".
select R*sqrt(
(sin(pi-p1.lng)*cos(p1.lat)-sin(pi-p2.lng)*cos(p2.lat))* (sin(pi-p1.lng)*cos(p1.lat)-sin(pi-p2.lng)*cos(p2.lat))
+
(sin(pi-p1.lng)*sin(p1.lat)-sin(pi-p2.lng)*sin(p2.lat))*
(sin(pi-p1.lng)*sin(p1.lat)-sin(pi-p2.lng)*sin(p2.lat))
+
(cos(pi-p1.lng)-cos(pi-p2.lng))*(cos(pi-p1.lng)-cos(pi-p2.lng))
from distance p1, distance p2
where R is the radius of Earth, and pi=3. Don't forget to convert angular degrees into radiants before you plug in them into the query above
Correction: This was euclidean distance sqrt((x1-x2)^2+(y1-y2)^2+(z1-z2)^2) between the points (x1,y1,z1) and (x2,y2,z2). Spherical distance is
sqrt(
(R*(colatitude1-colatitude2))^2+
(R*sin(colatitude1-colatitude2)*(longtitude1-longtitude2))^2
Message was edited by:
Vadim Tropashko