[postgis-users] when rasters in Postgis?

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Giorgio Plazzotta wrote:

[snip]

> but i am glad also to partecipate at a 
> discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of inserting the data 
> inside the geodatabase or leave them as external files.

I think both cases of raster data in the database and data outside the 
database are needed. This speaks to having a raster object and a raster 
reference object that might be equivalent expect one stores the data and 
one maintains a reference to a file.

> I tried to ask 
> the list before about the performance difference between splitting a 
> large vector file into several tiles managed through a tileindex or 
> inserting it inside postgis, but nobody answered.

I know the answer to this :) It will depend on your usage. Mapserver is 
fastest serving tiled shapefiles. So if you just need to serve maps you 
are probably better off using shapefiles, but if you need to do other 
operations on the vector data then PostGIS might offer some significant 
benefits. If you want to do thematic mapping you have to have your 
layers that will be rendered in PostGIS, but all layers do not need to 
be in PostGIS. While having the data in PostGIS it also opens the door 
to performing other types of geo-spatial computations, but if you never 
plan to take advantage of them in a production environment, you need to 
ask is it worth it.

For example, I put the polygon layers that I want to style thematically 
in PostGIS and keep all my highways and streets in shapefiles. This way 
I get the best of both.

-Steve