Shapefile vs. DB connections

[Armin Burger]

Tom,

One situation where I would say that PostGIS is really faster than shapefiles is when you use filter settings based on attributes. If the datasets are big then PostGIS layers with an index set on the filter attribute column(s) will be noticeably faster than shapefiles that do not have indexes.

For very complex datasets with lots of vertices (something like the coast of Norway) I got the impression that shapefiles might be faster to draw for lot of features displayed at the same time (small scale). This might be different for lot of simultaneous users.

Armin

> Hi,

> Does anyone have any info on comparing performance between serving
> MapServer w/ shapefiles vs. DB (i.e. PostGIS)?  I'm guessing shapefiles
> are quicker.

> Thanks

> ..Tom