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<TITLE>geographystyle feature request (external textual representation)</TITLE>
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<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">Hi PostGIS devs,</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-ca"></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">I would like to make a feature request relating to the</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">"</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">external textual representation</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">"</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> of the geography data type.</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> In short, I would like to request the provision of</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">a directly</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">human readable form</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> as I believe</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">it</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">may be the intention and possibly proper usage of</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">having the</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> "external textual representation"</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">.</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">Currently it appears that the geography data type is represented textually as something like "</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">010100008000000080EB5108400000006066662E400000000000005940</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">" which means little to nothing to the average human</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">.</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-ca"></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">Obviously we can run the ST_AsText function to get</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">another</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> more</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">readable column but then we have two columns</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">:</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> one</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">just</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">for readability and another</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">that users actually work with</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> to calculate distances etc</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">.</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> etc.</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> Or even worse, creating even more columns</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">for users to work with</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">using ST_X, ST_Y, ST_Z.</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">I would like to request that we instead be able to set the</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">"</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">external textual representation</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">" of the geography data type</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> to something more human</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">friendly such as to the output of ST_AsText.</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">This would allow users to</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">better understand the data while at the same time allowing them to work with it</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> without additional conversion.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">It is my understanding that this has been done in Postgres for the date and interval data types using the</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">commands</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">:</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">"SET DATESTYLE TO ISO" etc. or</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">"SET INTERVALSTYLE TO</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">POSTGRES" etc.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">Postgis could perhaps include something</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">similar:</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">"SET GEORAPHYSTYLE TO WKT"</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">, "SET GEOGRAPHYSTYLE TO POSTGIS", etc. or something along those lines</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> to give users some</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">more</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">options.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">Please forgive me if there is already such a feature</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> as I was not able to find it after searching both google and the postgis forums. If there is</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">,</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> then if you could please point me in the right direction</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> and my apologies.</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">If there isn't, then it might be interesting to hear back if people would be interested in such a feature</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> and even more interested to hear back if somebody else is willing to develop it.</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">I unfortunately don't have time at the moment to implement it myself as I am just at the early stages of testing Postgres/Postgis</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> and converting a very large dataset</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">.</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> But I believe such a feature might make Postgis a</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">n even</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri"></FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">more digestible option for our end users</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> and possibly others.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">I understand there could be some precision</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">related</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">issues in converting back and forth between internal storage and WKT</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> format that users would probably need to be aware of</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> but in such cases users should probably be using the "binary external representation" or</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">the usual geography/geometry constructors rather than "text external representation" for construction anyway.</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> Effectively, the text representation</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">is</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">probably one of the worst ones to be working with from a performance standpoint</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">(due to all the</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">extra</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">parsing in</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">v</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">olved)</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">so should be</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">possibly be</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">discouraged</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> in general</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> for anything other than</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri"></FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">convenience for</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">human use anyway.</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">Look</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">ing</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> forward to hearing from you,</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">Chris</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-ca"></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">Chris Malek</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">christophe.malek@ec.gc.ca</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">Data Assimilation Informatics</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">Canadian Meteorological Centre</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">2121 Trans Canada Highway</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">Dorval, Quebec</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-ca"><FONT FACE="Calibri">H9P 1J3</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-ca"></SPAN></P>
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