PostGIS in Action - E-Book final version officially out   

I am happy to report, that the final proof of the PostGIS in Action E-Book got released today and the printed version is scheduled for release Aprill 11th, 2011 and should be available on Amazon and other locations around then. The other e-Reader formats will come after that. You can buy from here or download the two free chapters, if you haven't already.

Each hard-copy purchase comes with a free E-Book version. There is a coupon in the back of the book when you get it to get the E-Book versions.

Yes, I know it's been a really really long time. On the bright side, we produced twice as much content as we had set out to do and that was with keeping things as concise as we could get away with, still managing to cover more than we set out to cover, and stripping out as many unnecessary words as we could muster. So 520 pages and almost 2 years later, this is where we are.

A good chunk of the additional bulk of the book was the appendices which are about 150 pages total and focus strictly on PostgreSQL and SQL. After many comments from early reviewers, we thought it unfair not to have a good chunk of PostgreSQL and just general relational database content to familiarize programmers and GIS folks with the RDBMS that PostGIS lives in. Most GIS folk unfortunately have the hardest time with getting up to speed with SQL and just standard RDBMS management.

Two free chapters and accompanying code for all chapters

The two free chapters we selectively picked because we thought they would be most beneficial to newcomers and people new to relational databases. So the free chapters are:

• Chapter 1: What is a spatial database? Which provides a fast paced history of PostGIS, PostgreSQL, Spatial Databases and moves into an even faster journey into converting flat file restaurant locations to spatial point geometries, loading in an ESRI shapefile of roads. Then shows you how to write standard spatial queries and render the results.
• Appendix C: SQL Primer -- goes through querying information_schemas, the common points of writing SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE SQL statements and the finer points of using aggregate functions, Windowing constructs and common table expressions as well as a brief overview of how PostgreSQL stacks up with other relational databases (SQL Server, Oracle, IBM DB2, MySQL, Firebird) in SQL features.
• All the chapter code and accompanying data. It's a bit hefty at 57 MB.

So even if you don't buy our book, we hope you find the free chapters useful.

You can get a more detailed listing of all the chapters from the PostGIS in Action book site.

We'd like to thank all those who supported us through this long and unpredictable journey. Hopefully we'll have several more, though hopefully a bit less nerve-racking than this first one.