Shapefile vs Postgres/Postgis

[Bart van den Eijnden]

Hi Hiten,

the main advantages of using a spatial database opposed to shapefiles are
in my opinion:

-maintenance
-data integrity
-the ability to perform difficult spatial analysis on your data using SQL

See also:
http://postgis.refractions.net/pipermail/postgis-users/2002-July/001247.html

We use the Deegree Catalog in several projects, but it is based on the
Deegree 1 (WCAS 0.0.6), and not on the Deegree 2 (CS-W). It is not very
easy to configure etc., but it works excellent. If you want to use it I
suggest working together with Lat/Lon, the German company behind Deegree.

Best regards,
Bart

> 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
>