[postgis-users] Re: rasters in PostGIS...

[Ken Lord]

Hi Jeff,

I've been lurking on the PostGIS / Raster topic, I have nothing to add
to the raster debate however you may like to know that there are a few
options for display of data from PostGIS:

QGIS 0.7 will in fact display and edit data from the current version
of PostGIS, and can display many raster formats. There is a windows
installer. The edit tools aren't great, but its something.

Jump works with older versions of PostGIS, there may be a current
version, although I havent found it.

I do believe GRASS works with PostGIS.

Udig will display PostGIS vectors and some raster formats. I hear that
there will be a significant new release of Udig in the coming months
that will add editing tools (check it out at refractions.net)

The zigGis project just started, which is working to allow better
display of PostGIS datasets directly in ArcGIS,  hopefully one day it
will allow write access / editing, if they can get around some
roadblocks in ESRI's system.

Most of the above systems including ArcGIS 9.1 will display data drawn
from WMS or WFS clients, which you can use to see your PostGIS data in
another fashion.

And you could setup a basic Mapserver website using the simple CGI
version, on your internal network (to keep it hidden from the public),
to allow you to 'see' the vectors and rasters together within a
browser ... or to act as the WMS / WFS server for your other
applications.

PostGIS does in fact have powerful spatial analysis capabilities, with
something like 300 spatial functions built in. A little SQL with these
functions will give you plenty of the analysis functionality to what
ArcSDE / Oracle Spatial will give you. ... without the $50,000 initial
outlay (Jan 2005 price of ArcSDE running on Oracle, with ArcIMS). I
understand Paul's crew can be hired to add specialized functions for
you.

Don't get me wrong, I know there are still plenty of obstacles for
people (like me) who don't deal well with command line tools that have
no documentation or incorrect usuages in their 'help' ... and before
the windows installer, it took me 2 weeks to get PostGIS working my
first time due to errors / omissions in the instructions and a bug in
one of the configuration files ... things that a windows user would
never have seen before and not know how to deal with ... but its way
better now than it was even 2 years ago,  and the future only looks
better.

Cheers,
Ken