PostGIS — The Complete Guide: An Open-Source Spatial Database for Infrastructure Data
PostGIS is an extension to the PostgreSQL database that teaches it about location and shape. Instead of keeping layers as separate files on a shared drive, all the spatial data of a project or organisation sits in tables, and you can ask geometric questions about it directly in SQL.
PostGIS
PostGIS Project Steering Committee (OSGeo)
An extension to the PostgreSQL database that adds storage, indexing and analysis of geospatial data through SQL queries.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- Geometry types — points, lines and polygons in 2D and 3D, plus raster data.
- Spatial indexing — fast queries even across millions of features.
- Hundreds of functions — distances, areas, intersections, buffers and geometry simplification.
- Multi-user editing — several people edit the same layer at once from QGIS.
- Map server links — GeoServer and MapServer read from it directly for web publishing.
Who it suits and what to know
GIS teams at municipalities, utilities and engineers managing water, sewer, road and survey data over time. It is not a program with windows and buttons: you need to install and maintain a PostgreSQL server and work in SQL or through a GIS client that connects to it. The licence is GPL, free for commercial use too.
Related tools
To edit and view the data — QGIS. For routing calculations on a network stored in the database — pgRouting. To publish layers as map services — GeoServer.
QGIS
QGIS.org
Open-source GIS for spatial analysis, layer work and map production.
Get it from the vendor
pgRouting
pgRouting Project (OSGeo)
An extension to PostGIS and PostgreSQL for routing and shortest-path calculations on road and infrastructure networks.
Get it from the vendor
GeoServer
Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo)
A map server — publishes GIS layers as WMS and WFS services for any software.
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GDAL
OSGeo
Command-line tools and a library to convert, reproject, clip and process geodata — DEMs, GeoTIFF, Shapefile and more.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
PostGIS is the standard foundation for a central open-source spatial store. Setting it up takes some know-how, but once it is running it is hard to go back to scattered files.