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PostGIS – Spatial and Geographic Objects for PostgreSQL

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Re: PostGIS – Spatial and Geographic Objects for PostgreSQL

#31

Post by jpgvm »

leetrout wrote: post #29
jpgvm wrote: post #8

PostGIS is one of those rare examples of highly specialised software that is both OSS and best-in-class. Usually OSS is relegated for highly commoditized software but GIS is anything but even after all these years. I can't really think of many others? Maybe OptaPlanner would be another candidate.

Is OptaPlanner best in class? (No snark) — It might be the best in Java but not sure more broadly.

It's definitely up there. I guess it's hard to say there is a single "best-in-class" solver because it does depend on the problem at hand but if I had to pick one it would be OptaPlanner.

Re: PostGIS – Spatial and Geographic Objects for PostgreSQL

#32

Post by sabman »

https://getgeodb.com is a hosted CartoDB which is an open source stack built on PostGIS but its notoriously hard to run and configure. So we decided to run it as a service for others... we find it very useful to build apps on top of PostGIS since running them requires configuring middleware like tileservices, data APIs and importing data.

would love any feedback :D ... you can also hit me up on twitter https://twitter.com/sabman

Re: PostGIS – Spatial and Geographic Objects for PostgreSQL

#33

Post by thom »

PostGIS is loads of fun with sports data. Being able to find similar passages of play just using ST_MakeLine and ST_FrechetDistance feels like magic when you first do it in all of five lines of code.

Spatial tools are a bit like logic programming in that they’re very slightly esoteric. But once you know they’re the right hammer for some nails, they’ll save you lots of time and effort over your life, and let you express some ideas you might otherwise struggle with.

Re: PostGIS – Spatial and Geographic Objects for PostgreSQL

#34

Post by twelvechairs »

stdbrouw wrote: post #18

FWIW, even though PostGIS is pretty great, if your use-case is primarily offline analysis and you don't need the data to be permanently accessible or writable, consider not using a database at all. You can do a lot, a lot faster with e.g. https://shapely.readthedocs.io/en/stable/manual.html and/or https://geopandas.org/ .

Ultimately for spatial functions both PostGIS and Shapely/Geopandas are using GEOS as the base library, so neither are 'a lot faster' for analysis at a fundamental level. Lots of queries to a database brings some speed loss but this isn't necessary for the vast majority of use cases. OTOH PostGIS is in many cases much more finely tuned than shapely/geopandas for speed, scale and parallelisation (it is a much more highly maintained library) so can actually be faster.

Functionality is a different thing. PostGIS has a lot more baked in functionality than shapely. But shapely/geopandas exposes the depth of python and its libraries which allow much more extensive customisation of how to work with data.

Lots of tradeoffs and overlapping use cases - I just wanted to add some depth to this discussion.

Re: PostGIS – Spatial and Geographic Objects for PostgreSQL

#36

Post by twelvechairs »

A couple of excellent GIS related links I would recommend to anyone interested in this area.

Talks and writing by PostGIS co-creator Paul Ramsey (who is incredible): http://blog.cleverelephant.ca/writings

The mapscaping podcast - a lot of intros to the complex and overlapping worlds of GIS: https://mapscaping.com/blogs/the-mapscaping-podcast

Re: PostGIS – Spatial and Geographic Objects for PostgreSQL

#37

Post by gfiorav »

nixpulvis wrote: post #4

I've been using PostGIS a bit for a toy project with Elite: Dangerous star system data. It's been a hoot, but I do worry that I'm going to start having trouble optimizing my queries. Finding all the systems within say 20 Ly of our sun can take upwards of a few seconds, and I've already added a GIST index on the positions. I also find it a bit strange how 3D feels kinda tacked on, but it makes sense when you realize m…

You can subdivide large geometries. You can decide how much by controlling the amount of vertices a polygon can have before it’s chopped away.

Intersections with large polygons will perform faster if subdivided.

Re: PostGIS – Spatial and Geographic Objects for PostgreSQL

#38

Post by simonw »

tcbasche wrote: post #22
gardaani wrote: post #6

Here's an interesting performance comparison of PostgreSQL with PostGIS and MongoDB. PostgreSQL outperformed MongoDB in almost all their cases. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10707-020-00407-w I've decided to use PostgreSQL in my projects.

Thanks for sharing this! I've been thinking about alternatives to PostGIS to handle larger datasets (millions) and nothing seems to come close to the level of functionality, performance and community support of Postgres

Millions is a pretty small dataset these days. I'm increasingly of the opinion that the boundary for considering "big data" tools starts at about 100 million rows.

Re: PostGIS – Spatial and Geographic Objects for PostgreSQL

#39

Post by darksaints »

leetrout wrote: post #29
jpgvm wrote: post #8

PostGIS is one of those rare examples of highly specialised software that is both OSS and best-in-class. Usually OSS is relegated for highly commoditized software but GIS is anything but even after all these years. I can't really think of many others? Maybe OptaPlanner would be another candidate.

Is OptaPlanner best in class? (No snark) — It might be the best in Java but not sure more broadly.

I'd say it's not quite in the same category as Postgis, where the open source project is handily better than any closed source rivals. It competes well with some closed source competitors but not all of them.

Re: PostGIS – Spatial and Geographic Objects for PostgreSQL

#40

Post by splithalf »

ntechau wrote: post #25
Ahmed90 wrote: post #12

4 years ago one of my clients wanted to "donate" a system for the local fire department to help them do a quick proximity search to find the fire hydrants and quickly choose the healthy one near the fire. And since it was charity and had a bunch of private data Google was not an option ($$$$), so I (just a full-stack developer back then) was like "listen I have no idea what is this GIS stuff, but I'll give it a try",…

Comparatively, I've spent 4 years of my life on a CompSci degree + 2 years on a GIS Advanced Diploma achieved over 10 years ago mind you). There was a point in my life a few years ago where my study was so unnoticed and under appreciated that I gave it up and now I just do full project management - and I barely even do that. I blame the internet and the accessibility of knowledge to the point where people can go "IDK…

It’s who you know, not what you know.
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