Also, to clarify a bit on why spatial capabilities weren't part of the MBTiles spec: when rendering maps, you assemble tiles for a given zoom scale in the verti

Also, to clarify a bit on why spatial capabilities weren't part of the MBTiles spec: when rendering maps, you assemble tiles for a given zoom scale in the vertical and horizontal directions, like a checkerboard. The unique tuple defining a particular square on the map is z/x/y — zoom level, horizontal, vertical. So stuffing these into SQLite and uniquely keying across z/x/y there makes for fast retrieval at render time.