[mapserver-users] Mapserver and PostgreSQL

[Kieran J. Ames]

I'd not heard of shp2pgsql before.
Is there a windows version of shp2pgsql around? I looked in my Mapserver
directory and don't see it.
Thanks,
Kieran


Jan Hartmann wrote:

> Arjen Vrielink wrote:
>  > Hello All,
>  >
>  > I was wondering if I could connect to a PostgreSQL database directly
>  > from Mapserver. The problem is that we have SuSE 8.1 doing the
>  > installation of PostgreSQL so we don't have the pg src code on our
>  > machine which you need to install / compile PostGIS. Not being convinced
>  > about the benefits of POSTGIS after reading the documentation I decided
>  > I could live without it. That is, until I tried to get Mapserver connect
>  > to my Postgres db --> There are no error messages but I don't get the
>  > layer displayed either (I use an ESRI shapefile which I dumped to SQL
>  > code for testing). So my basic question is: do I really need Postgis
>  > (and what are the benefits of Postgis anyway)? if I really need postgis,
>  > I will get the postgres source code and install it manually on my linux
>  > box.
>  >
>  > Suggestions would be appreciated, thanks
>  >
>  > using:
>  > Linux 2.4.something
>  > PostgreSQL 7.2
>  > Mapserver 3.6
>  > (PHP 4.3.0RC1)
>  >
>  > arjen,
>  > SarVision
>  > Wageningen
>  > The Netherlands
>  >
>  >
>
> Arjen,
>
> You are not obliged to use PostGIS . MapServer will run quite happily on
> its own (with great functionality). However, if you are on a Linux
> platform, I would certainly advise to add PostGreSQL with the PostGIS
> extension (you cannot connect MapServer to PostgreSQL without it). Reasons:
>
> - You can import every database from Windows (including Access) into
> PostgreSQL by a few mouseclicks using pgAdmin. These data can be
> uniformly queried by full-featured SQL and combined with GIS maps
> - You can import most vector GIS files by using shp2pgsql or ogr2ogr and
> let MapServer build maps based on them. Most important, you can create
> maps based on combinations of geographical queries (e.g. everything
> within a certain distance of selected objects), and regular attribute
> queries (e.g. everything with a certain name).
>
> For this you need the PostgreSQL source code. Personally I don't use the
> locations of  standard distributions like SUSE for this: it's very
> difficult to remember where they put things. I download the source code
> under my $HOME directory and configure everything with ./configure
> --prefix=$HOME. After that you need to install the PostGIS extension. If
> you managed to compile and install MapServer, this should be no problem
> at all. Perhaps you should wait a few days until PostgreSQL 7.3 is released.
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> Vriendelijke groeten,
>
> Jan
>
> Jan Hartmann
> Department of Geography
> University of Amsterdam
> jhart at frw.uva.nl