Who’s Using PostGIS? PostGIS Team The City of Boston has an internal Dave Blasby is the principal developer web-based property analysis application, of the PostGIS spatial database extension to based on PostGIS, which performs spatial PostgreSQL. Dave maintains the core objects queries on land parcels and displays results and functions, and Mapserver connectivity. using Mapserver. Paul Ramsey is the PostGIS project The Department of Natural evangelist and release manager. Paul maintains Resources in Queensland, Australia uses the documentation, web site, and the JDBC PostGIS in their internal Forestry Permitting extensions. web application. The database is queried by Chris Hodgson maintains the GiST attribute and a map of the parcel area is indexing support functions. displayed along with supporting information. Jeff Lounsbury maintains the Shape file The Ministry of Sustainable data loaders and dumpers. Resource Management in British Columbia, Canada uses PostGIS to store, manage and analyze their Digital Road Atlas, Refractions Research a very large and complex road network database. Refractions Research is a GIS and database consulting and development corporation, I-Cubed Inc, USA, has a large automated specializing in data integration and image processing system which uses PostGIS open-source spatial solutions. to track the spatial extents of incoming requests, and coordinate processing tasks Refractions offers consulting services in GIS, among their network of workstations. internet mapping with Mapserver, and PostGIS/PostgreSQL database implementation, Intevation Gmbh, Germany, is developing as well as custom enhancements to PostGIS. A Spatial a massively multiplayer online game where players will have their position stored in Database PostGIS, and the game engine will query the For more information, contact: server to generate the game display. for the The Finnish Geodetic Institute is creating a regional distributed GIS network Rest of Us using GeoServer OpenGIS Web Feature Server with PostGIS as the database back-end. Refractions Research Paul Ramsey, President Victoria, BC, Canada [email protected] http://postgis.refractions.net Phone: (250) 885-0632 http://www.refractions.net Fax: (250) 383-2140 About PostGIS History Development Roadmap PostGIS adds support for geographic objects Adding spatial capabilities to PostgreSQL Future development will concentrate on to the PostgreSQL object-relational database. is a project which seems redundant – after all, making PostGIS more OpenGIS conformant In effect, PostGIS “spatially enables” the PostgreSQL already has “geometric types”. and on improving connectivity to external PostgreSQL server, allowing it to be used as Unfortunately the native geometric types, software: a backend spatial database for geographic while interesting, are not suitable for true GIS • Port the topological functions in information systems (GIS), much like ESRI’s data: none of the types support “aggregate the “Java Topology Suite” (JTS) SDE or Oracle’s Spatial extension. features”, the polygon type does not support to C++ and PostGIS. Full topology holes, and the indexing is restricted by the PostGIS/PostgreSQL includes operations are a major feature necessary to old 8Kb row size limit. the following functionality: be fully compliant with the OpenGIS PostGIS became a feasible project when “Simple Features for SQL” specification. • Simple Features as defined by the PostgreSQL 7.1 removed the 8Kb row size JTS provides a robust suite of open-source OpenGIS Consortium (OGC) limitation. Using the OpenGIS spatial topology algorithms. • Support for Well-Known Text and database specification as a guide, we created • Implement an OpenGIS “Web Well-Known Binary representations new spatial types, and tied them into the GiST Feature Server” (WFS) on top of of GIS objects indexing system. Version 0.1 was released in PostGIS. WFS will be a major late June, 2001, featuring the spatial objects, • High performance spatial searching using interoperability breakthrough, allowing spatial indexing, and little else. GiST (Generalized Search Tree) indexes sophisticated desktop GIS software to • Geospatial analysis functions Subsequent development has focused on access any GIS data source through a single implementing the OpenGIS “Simple Features open API. • JDBC extension objects corresponding to the for SQL” specification more completely. PostGIS geometries Version 0.5 (July 2001) featured a major More Information • Support for OGC spatial access and breakthrough – the ability to use PostGIS PostGIS manipulation functions as defined by the as a data source for the University of http://postgis.refractions.net Simple Features Specification Minnesota Internet Mapserver. For the Open-source GIS tools are relatively new, and first time, it became possible to graphically OpenGIS http://www.opengis.org an open-source spatial database is important to view the spatial data stored in PostGIS. GiST for PostgreSQL the open-source GIS community. PostGIS Versions 0.6 and 0.7 have continued the source code is released under the GNU http://www.sai.msu.su/ trend of OpenGIS compatibility, adding ~megera/postgres/gist/ General Public Licence (GPL). support for embedded spatial reference Java Topology Suite PostGIS is developed and maintained by the systems, coordinate re-projection, and even http://www.vividsolutions.com/ more functions. staff of Refractions Research, in Victoria, BC, jts/jtshome.htm Canada. Minnesota Mapserver http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu