[GRASS5] Postgresql and Grass

[Andreas Lange]

Hi,

i can only jump into this discussion now and i must admit that i have
very little experience with database/gis interoperability.

In my eyes the most needed things are:
- color support for vectors (please use the structure from raster maps
so that users do not have to learn another system)
- full category/attribute support for vectors, 
- selection and reclassification of vectors based on attributes.
(- maybe inclusion of vectors in the raster based MASK selection in
GRASS?)
- metadata/history support for vectors. 

I personally would prefer GRASS not to be tied to a specific database
server (PostgreSQL or any other). The Unix-ODBC is great, but limits the
connectivity to relational DBMS (?). I got the impression that the
object-oriented DBMS are not yet ready for wider use and wonder if there
is an open implementation for a object-oriented DBMS. 

The flat-file approach of GRASS has many advantages for small datasets
and i think it should be possible to have both (flat-file database and
connection to DBMS) within GRASS. 

GRASS vectors IMHO should be usable without a DBMS (with reduced
functionality). 
I think that the main problem is that there are until now no widely
accepted, open data structures/formats for both data and metadata. Many
solutions are proprietary or only used by specific communities within
GIS.

XML seems to be an alternative, but i have no idea if it is possible to
use XML for data storage (speed considerations, indexing etc.) or if it
is only useful for data exchange.  

I hope that the experts can give a draft on the alternatives so that
users without much background in computer science and database design
can comment on this.

cu,

Andreas 
-- 
Andreas Lange, 65187 Wiesbaden, Germany, Tel. +49 611 807850
Andreas.Lange at Rhein-Main.de - A.C.Lange at GMX.net


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