Discussion

MySQL has data types which correspond to OpenGIS classes. Some of these types hold single geometry values: GEOMETRY, POINT, LINESTRING, POLYGON. These column data types can be used for storing and indexing spatial values. For indexing a table based on a spatial column, it's necessary that spatial columns that are to be indexed must be declared NOT NULL when creating or altering a table. For example, notice that NOT NULL must be specific for 'location' field below:

CREATE TABLE table1
(
  place VARCHAR(200) NOT NULL,
  location POINT NOT NULL,
  SPATIAL INDEX(location),
  PRIMARY KEY(place)
)ENGINE=MyISAM;

INSERT INTO table1(place,location) 
   VALUES ('Point1', GeomFromText('POINT(20 43)'));