Shapefile vs Postgres/Postgis

[Hiten Ravani]

Hi all,

I am software developer and not a GIS expert. Recently my company has asked
me to do research in various GIS technologies and therefore was curious
about what are the advantages and disadvantages of storing your gis data in
shapefiles vs storing it in postgres and accessing it via postgis.

One more question, I am also looking into OGC Catalogue Service
specifications. Their aren't many products which implement this right now,
the only ones I found were deegree (open source) , and cubewerx and ionic
(commercial). I was wondering if anyone had used any of the above products
or anything else and could suggest me in the right direction. It would be
preferable to stick to open source/standards as much as possible.

Sorry as the post is not related to mapserver.

Thanks,

Regards,
Hiten