[postgis-users] Roadmap for raster support in PostGIS

[Stephen Marshall]

I'm curious about what efforts are planned or underway to support raster 
data types in PostGIS. 

The current support seems limited to CHIP data type.  However, I have 
looked through the code for CHIP data type and it seems to be mostly a 
placeholder for future work.  There are not any public functions that I 
can see for storing or manipulating CHIPs, making it of limited usefulness.

I've seen Simon Benjamin's PGCHIP project to integrate GDAL with the 
CHIP data type, but this seems mostly about input-output of CHIPs and 
does not address manipulation of CHIPs. 

I've also seen mention in the "Summer of Code" ideas page for work on 
Coverage (or raster-like) data.  I'm not sure if this relates to CHIPs, 
or is about a new data type for raster data. 

I'd appreciate it if someone could explain the status of raster support 
within PostGIS and articulate any vision for its future.  Perhaps the 
addition of a Raster Support page within the PostGIS Wiki would be 
helpful to gather together the time and talent needed for critical mass 
on a raster-support effort.

Yours,
Steve Marshall