PostGIS for geospatial analysis and mapping   

In later issues we'll be covering other PostgreSQL contribs. We would like to start our first issue with introducing, PostGIS, one of our favorite PostgreSQL contribs. PostGIS spatially enables PostgreSQL in an OpenGeospatial Consortium (OGC) compliant way. PostGIS was one reason we started using PostgreSQL way back in 2001 when Refractions released the first version of PostGIS with the objective of providing affordable basic OGC Compliant spatial functionality to rival the very expensive commercial offerings. There is perhaps nothing more powerful in the geospatial world than the succinct expressiveness of SQL married with spatial operators and functions. Together they allow you to manipulate and analyze space with a single sentence. For details on using Postgis and why you would want to, check out the following links

• Introduction to PostGIS
• Webb Sprague's talk on PostGIS (Geographic Databases)
• PostGIS site
• Almost idiot's guide to PostGIS
• PostGIS Cheatsheet

Just as PostgreSQL has grown over the years, so too has PostGIS and the whole FOSS4G ecosystem. PostGIS has benefited from both the FOSS4G and PostgreSQL growths. On the PostgreSQL, improvements such as improved GIST indexing, bitmap indexes etc and on the FOSS4G side dependency projects such as Geos and Proj4, and JTS, as well as more tools and applications being built on top of it.

In 2001 only UMN Mapserver was available to display PostGIS spatial data. As time has passed, UMN Mapserver has grown, and other Mapping software both Commercial and Open Source have come on board that can utilize PostGIS spatial data directly. On the FOSS side there are many, some being UMN Mapserver, GRASS, uDig, QGIS, GDAL/OGR, FeatureServer, GeoServer, SharpMap, ZigGIS for ArcGIS integration, and on the commercial side you have CadCorp SIS, Manifold, MapDotNet, Safe FME Data Interoperability and ETL tools.

In terms of spatial databases, PostGIS is the most capable open source spatial database extender. While MySQL does have some spatial capabilities, its spatial capabilities are extremely limited particularly in the selectivity of the spatial relational functions which are all MBR only, ability to create spatial indexes on non-MyISAM stores, and lack a lot of the OGC compliant functions such as Intersection, Buffering even in its 5.1 product. For details on this check the MySQL 5.1 docs - Spatial Extensions.

When compared with commercial spatial databases, PostGIS has most of the core functions you will see in the commercial databases such as Oracle Spatial, DB2 Spatial Blade, Informix Spatial Blade, has comparable speed, fewer deployment headaches, but lacks some of the advanced add-ons you will find, such as Oracle Spatial network topology model, Raster Support and Geodetic support. Often times the advanced spatial features are add-ons on top of the standard price of the database software.

Some will argue that for example Oracle provides Locator free of charge in their standard and XE versions, Oracle Locator has a limited set of spatial functions. Oracle's Locator is missing most of the core spatial analysis and geometric manipulation functions like centroid, buffering, intersection and spatial aggregate functions; granted it does sport geodetic functionality that PostGIS is currently lacking. To use those non-locator features requires Oracle Spatial and Oracle Enterprise which would cost upwards of $60,000 per processor. Many have heard of SQL Server 2008 coming out and the new spatial features it will sport which will be available in both the express and the full version. One feature that SQL Server 2008 will have that PostGIS currently lacks is Geodetic support (the round world model so to speak). Aside from that SQL Server 2008 has a glarying omission from a current GIS perspective - and that is the ability to transform from one spatial reference system to another directly in the database and is Windows bound so not an option for anyone who needs or is thinking of cross-platform or in a Unix environment. SQL Server 2008 will probably come closest to PostGIS in terms of price / functionality. The express versions of the commercial offerings have many limitations in terms of size of database and usually limited to one processor use. For any reasonably sized deployment in terms of database size, processor utilization, replication, or ISP/Service Provider/Integrator this is not adequate and for any reasonably large deployment that is not receiving manna from heaven, some of the commercial offerings like Oracle Spatial, are not cost-sensible.

Note that in near future versions PostGIS is planning to have geodetic support and does provide basic network topology support via the PgRouting project and there are plans to incorporate network topology as part of PostGIS.

There is a rise in the use of mapping and geospatial analysis in the world and it is moving out of its GIS comfort zone to mingle more with other IT Infrastructure, General Sciences, and Engineering. Mapping and the whole Geospatial industry is not just a tool for GIS specialists anymore. A lot of this rise is driven by the rise of mapping mashups - things like Google Maps, Microsoft Virtual Earth, and Open data initiatives that are introducing new avenues of map sharing and spatial awareness. This new rise is what many refer to as NeoGeography. NeoGeography is still in its infancy; people are just getting over the excitement of seeing dots in their hometown, and are quickly moving into the next level - where more detailed questions are being asked about those dots and dots are no longer sufficient. We want to draw trails such as trail of hurricane destruction, avian bird flu, track our movement with GPS, draw boundaries and measure the densities of these based on some socio-ecological factor and we need to store all that user generated or tool generated information, and have all that transactional goodness, security and ability to query in an easy way that a relational database offers. This is the level where PostGIS and other spatial databases are most useful.