Using BETWEEN in an EJB3 query

Say if you have an EJB3 entity bean named Landmark which is mapped to a table called landmarks which has 2 columns longitude & latitude (amongst others). To query a given latitude & longitude, its a good idea to relax the query a bit by using BETWEEN.

An example is shown below where we allow a tolerance of 0.00003 for both latitude & longitude. The sample shown is an excerpt from an EJB3 entity bean, right before its class declaration.

@Entity
@Table(name = "landmarks")
@NamedQueries( {
   @NamedQuery(
      name = "Landmark.findByCoordinates", 
      query = "SELECT lgr FROM Landmark lgr " +
              "WHERE lgr.latitude BETWEEN (?1 - 0.00003) AND (?1 + 0.00003) " +
              "AND lgr.longitude BETWEEN (?2 - 0.00003) AND (?2 + 0.00003) ")
})
public class Landmark implements Serializable {

Convert NMEA latitude & longitude to decimal

Here's how you convert latitude & longitude obtained from NMEA's GPGGA to decimal:

	NMEA	Decimal
latitude	0302.78469	03 + (02.78469/60) = 3.046412
longitude	10141.82531	101 + 41.82531/60) = 101.6971

Notice that for latitude of 0302.78469,


03 ==> degress. counted as is


02.78469 ==> minutes. divide by 60 before adding to degrees above


Hence, the decimal equivalent is:


03 + (02.78469/60) = 3.046412