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PostGIS at 20, the Beginning

blog.cleverelephant.ca

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Re: PostGIS at 20, the Beginning

#21

Post by benboughton1 »

pramsey wrote: post #20
benboughton1 wrote: post #19

I love PostGIS. I have used it in many projects. PostGIS raster is really interesting to me but the general sentiment is that it's a bit slow and only use it if you need to. It just seems so powerful to combine raster and vector with SQL. What would the alternative be for raster query vertical and horizontal combined with vector? GRASSGIS Timeseries tools look interesting but I've not tried those. Any other ideas?

I remain pretty leery of raster in the database, for the reasons you list, but the power of GDAL to reach out over networks for raster access makes me a little more excited about some raster/vector use cases. It's not a panacea, but it's something. https://blog.crunchydata.com/postgis-raster-and-crunchy-brid...

I read that blog post. Such a good example. But there is even a comment in there warning about raster via database. I am going to try it out as well with some MODIS data. I wonder what needs to be done to make raster more performant in POSTGIS?

Re: PostGIS at 20, the Beginning

#22

Post by benboughton1 »

benboughton1 wrote: post #21
pramsey wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remain pretty leery of raster in the database, for the reasons you list, but the power of GDAL to reach out over networks for raster access makes me a little more excited about some raster/vector use cases. It's not a panacea, but it's something. https://blog.crunchydata.com/postgis-raster-and-crunchy-brid...

I read that blog post. Such a good example. But there is even a comment in there warning about raster via database. I am going to try it out as well with some MODIS data. I wonder what needs to be done to make raster more performant in POSTGIS?

I just realised you are the author, so thankyou!

Re: PostGIS at 20, the Beginning

#23

Post by pramsey »

benboughton1 wrote: post #21
pramsey wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remain pretty leery of raster in the database, for the reasons you list, but the power of GDAL to reach out over networks for raster access makes me a little more excited about some raster/vector use cases. It's not a panacea, but it's something. https://blog.crunchydata.com/postgis-raster-and-crunchy-brid...

I read that blog post. Such a good example. But there is even a comment in there warning about raster via database. I am going to try it out as well with some MODIS data. I wonder what needs to be done to make raster more performant in POSTGIS?

There's some work to be done to make all functions parallelizeable. After that it gets harder. For large scale raster analysis, moving the processing closer to the data becomes paramount. I feel like purpose-built raster processing will always be better. Maybe something with FDW or other client/service architecture, where the database sends off the request and the bulk processing happens close to the data. Also, the row-based model of SQL sort of breaks down against raster where the model expects much much larger objects and presenting the tiled-up model to users just adds complexity without getting back performance or flexibility in return.

Re: PostGIS at 20, the Beginning

#24

Post by jokoon »

I have to admit I was quite happy to use sqlite/spatialite and load actual map data into it, it was not easy but manageable.

I'm really looking forward making explorable a 3D world and cities from GIS data, it seems like it's quite ambitious and there are people already doing it, but for gaming it would mean having a very large world and require less 3D artists.

Re: PostGIS at 20, the Beginning

#25

Post by benboughton1 »

billfruit wrote: post #6

PostGIS is popular and fine, but is there a front end framework available designed to work with it, so that one can fully avoid the proprietary ESRI stack?

PostGIS can write to GeoJSON so you can have a simple flask or bottlepy webserver to query the db. Then use leaflet GeoJSON layer to pull down the data and render it on map.

There is of course the newer vector tiles which is a better solution in many situations but a bit more complicated to get going. Crunchy Data have made some good examples and a nice tile server for this.

Re: PostGIS at 20, the Beginning

#26

Post by rubyn00bie »

PostGIS is one of those tools (along with Postgres as a whole, Redis also comes to mind) that has been a fucking pleasure to use and depend on. It works, brilliantly, is performant and fairly (relative to complexity) easy to use. If it wasn't for PostGIS I'd have been so far up shit creek at one point, I'd have needed climbing gear to go back down.

Big thanks to all the folks who have spent their time on it. You've created something truly fucking helpful <3

Re: PostGIS at 20, the Beginning

#27

Post by jerrysievert »

pramsey wrote: post #17
billfruit wrote: post #6

PostGIS is popular and fine, but is there a front end framework available designed to work with it, so that one can fully avoid the proprietary ESRI stack?

PostGIS is now basically the "industry standard", so most third party tools work with it, even Esri! Here's some open source parts: Desktop: https://qgis.org Middleware: https://mapserver.org , https://geoserver.org , https://mapnik.org , https://github.com/crunchydata/pg_tileserv , https://github.com/crunchydata/pg_featureserv Web UI: https://openlayers.org , https://leaflet.org , https://www.mapbox.com/mapbox-gljs

much to some grumpiness from the home office, we even used postgis at esri's Portland R&D center.

it was a pleasure to use, and pramsey is definitely a stand up person.

Re: PostGIS at 20, the Beginning

#28

Post by flurben »

murphy214 wrote: post #13
billfruit wrote: post #6

PostGIS is popular and fine, but is there a front end framework available designed to work with it, so that one can fully avoid the proprietary ESRI stack?

Mapbox is the probably the best GL based mapping client but it is no longer free on the latest version. Although, its not designed to work with PostGIS explicitly you definitely can. (i.e. querying mvts, map tiles, through PostGIS) Leaflet as others have said is another good option, but is really made for old slipply map tiles. Most of the ESRI based web clients I think look and feel terrible IMO. Rendering just look…

Esri's JavaScript API 3 has poor performance, but I've been very happy with version 4.

Re: PostGIS at 20, the Beginning

#29

Post by angrygoat »

rubyn00bie wrote: post #26

PostGIS is one of those tools (along with Postgres as a whole, Redis also comes to mind) that has been a fucking pleasure to use and depend on. It works, brilliantly, is performant and fairly (relative to complexity) easy to use. If it wasn't for PostGIS I'd have been so far up shit creek at one point, I'd have needed climbing gear to go back down. Big thanks to all the folks who have spent their time on it. You've c…

It has also taken a whole subfield, GIS, which was seen as difficult, expensive, and specialised, and made it possible to easily include geospatial functions in all sorts of projects.

Re: PostGIS at 20, the Beginning

#30

Post by gerbler »

Thank you Paul!

I co-built a small company on GeoDjango (Django + PostGIS) and it was a real pleasure to be able to have such a well-working piece of technology in a very fragmented and messy space.

It's a real gem in the world of geospatial data.

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