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<font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">Hi Paul,</font><br>
<br>
Paul Ramsey wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid404BCC11.4050306@refractions.net" type="cite">Hi
All,
<br>
<br>
It is that time of year again (conference time) so I am going to ask my
annual question(s):
<br>
<br>
Who are you?
<br>
</blockquote>
Alexander Pucher, representing the Institute of Geography and Regional
Research - Cartography and Geoinformation - at the University of
Vienna, Austria<br>
<blockquote cite="mid404BCC11.4050306@refractions.net" type="cite">
What are you using PostGIS for?
<br>
</blockquote>
Storing most of our geodata for a mixed cartography/GIS mapping
environment. We run several applications, backed up by PostGIS. These
includes a multinational atlas, cooperations with historians,
geologists as well as the educational field (e.g.
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.gis.univie.ac.at/mymap/">http://www.gis.univie.ac.at/mymap/</a>)<br>
<blockquote cite="mid404BCC11.4050306@refractions.net" type="cite">
Why did you choose PostGIS?</blockquote>
Started with MySQL some years ago (first few applications were a mix of
geodata/shapefile-thematic data/MySQL). Soon, the demand for storage of
"real" geographic data was discovered. Along with this, we already
planned the migration from MySQL to PostgreSQL for several other
reasons than the geodata thing. <br>
<blockquote cite="mid404BCC11.4050306@refractions.net" type="cite"><br>
What makes you happy about your PostGIS installation?
<br>
</blockquote>
Performance! <br>
Close integration with UMN MapServer and PHP/MapScript. <br>
What makes me really happy are the faces of people involved in the
GIS/mapping field when you show them a running system built up of pure
Open-Source components!!<br>
<blockquote cite="mid404BCC11.4050306@refractions.net" type="cite">
What makes you unhappy about your PostGIS installation?
<br>
</blockquote>
(Still) the general opinion towards open-Source software makes me
unhappy. At first sight, above mentioned folks are amazed by PostGIS,
when you tell them it's free, the old prejudices come up again. So, a
broader publicity and acceptance of PostGIS ("No, it's not Oracle
Spatial-Yes, it really works-No, it's not badly tested-Yes, it is
maintained.....) would be very helpful. Of course, this goes out to the
whole community!<br>
<br>
<br>
Regards,<br>
alex.<br>
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