1. A computer-implemented method executed in a processor-based computing system comprising one or more processing units coupled to a data store maintaining a database, the method comprising: defining, in a processing unit of the one or more processing units acting on data stored in the database a geospatial datatype for encoding a plurality of coordinate points in a two-dimensional data space into a single datum that includes respective pairs of an X-ordinate and a Y-ordinate; dividing the two-dimensional data space into a plurality of Y strips in order to partition the two-dimensional data space to facilitate sorting of the two-dimensional data through a strip sorting process, wherein each strip is of a defined Y-strip width based on a search radius that is expected to be used on the data; defining a Y-strip field that encodes a limit on the number of data points to examine based on the Y-ordinate value; defining a unique part identifier (UPI) data structure for the datum comprising a Y-strip field followed by X-ordinate data followed by Y-ordinate data for each strip of the plurality of Y strips; and converting the X-ordinates and Y-ordinates to a normalized number format, wherein the UPI data structure is arranged with the geospatial datatype as the most significant field followed in order of significance by the geospatial subtype, Y-strip identifier, normalized X-ordinate, and normalized Y-ordinate, wherein the component fields of the UPI data structure are arranged so that the datum can be sorted linearly as a single unsigned integer, and wherein the UPI data structure is configured for use in a triple store, and wherein the UPI is used in a resource description framework (RDF) metadata model in which statements about resources are made on the form of subject-predicate -object (SPO) expressions.