[mapguide-users] Database Comparisons/Reviews/Recommendations

[Bracco Stefano]

We have done an internal assessment for the same issue in my
institution, and we have found 3 main competitors:

PostGIS;
Oracle with Oracle Spatial;
MS Sql Server 2008 with the Spatial Features.

- In term of DataBase Capabilities we have found that Oracle had more
functions than the others, the second in the list is PostGIS and the
difference was around 30-40 functionalities (we were anyway in the order
of 200 features/functionalities, the objects are different and are
difficult to compare as you do not have the code of Oracle), most of
them are not so relevant, are only specialized functions which have been
implemented in 11g to improve Oracle Spatial. We decided not to go for
SQL Server because of the number of limitations due to the early stage
of this product, in our opinion, anyway was tested.
- We tested the scalability on a reduced data set, and Oracle and
PostGIS were more or less comparable, for some reasons SQL Server was
very slow, I have re-tested and the performances are increasing every
new release/PatchSet.
- In term of performances for a medium data set (we have tested with 100
GB Data) PostGIS was better, growing in size and with a good hardware,
you see the Oracle advantage, which could be located in the field of
Scalability;
- Manageability: SQL Server was the first (after 3 months there were a
lot of graphical tools made by a lot of users to manage all the things
in the DB), but also Oracle was very good as there were a lot of tools
to manage data input, output, database and most of them were Web Based.
We have found it a little bit difficult with PostGIS, but if you like
Command Line, then it is absolutely ok;
- Bugs: SQL Server was at the early stage, and it had a lot of bugs,
some of them were affecting heavily the tests, Oracle had problems as
well, some of them are well known, I wondered of the time needed to
correct them, sometimes can happen that you open a bug report and they
schedule to solve in 1 release, which means at least 1 year. In PostGIS
the speed to correct a bug is higher, which would say that if you have a
big issue the competitive advantage could be to use PostGIS (the OS
Community has a fast response!);
- Bugs and Issues with MapGuide and FDO: I wonder about the availability
and easy installation with PostGIS. With Oracle I have seen a lot of
problems and limitations, but we decided to have a WFS/WMS to hide all
the problems and to mode them to another layer. For SQL Server there was
no FDO at that stage, we tested exposing data thru WMS/WFS. If this is a
must, PostGIS is the obvious choice in my view.

This just to briefly summarize the Spatial DB World related to MapGuide
:)

On the end we went for Oracle because we already had users trained to
use it and who were knowing quite well the Oracle Functions to run their
own researches. PostGIS has been added anyway in the last six months to
our SDI, so people can choose. I wonder if could be a good investment to
have a bridge between Oracle and PostGIS (in Oracle it is call gateway),
just to have one single point of access, but I think this will remain a
dream.

HTH.

Stefano 
 


-----Original Message-----
From: mapguide-users-bounces at lists.osgeo.org
[mailto:mapguide-users-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Steve G
Sent: Tuesday, 31 August, 2010 00:38
To: mapguide-users at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: [mapguide-users] Database Comparisons/Reviews/Recommendations


Sorry if this has already been posted before (I did a search, but didn't
find
much).  I am currently running MGOS 2.1 on a Win2003 Server with all of
my
geospatial data in shapefiles (about 60 layers; unmanaged resources on a
network file server; probably will upgrade to Win2008 Server soon).  It
actually runs quite well with the data I have, however, just looking
into
the future and thinking about migrating the data into an actual spatial
database.  I was wondering if there are any case
studies/reviews/comparisons, etc of the freely available databases or if
you
just want to respond with your own experiences.  I know it ultimately
depends on what I want the database to do, but hoping to leverage the
knowledge of other users before making a decision.  Some things I would
be
interested in are:

-Database capabilities
-Scalability (size limitations; connection limmitations; schema locking
when
editing; etc)
-How easy to manage?
-Performance/Speed
-Major Bugs/Issues using with Mapguide
-Major Bugs/Issues using with current FDO providers


Thanks for any input.  If there is a lot of feedback, I will try to
combine
and place in a better spot (back in the Mapguide OSGEO website).
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