[GRASS-user] Re: [postgis-users] Raster Support...

[Markus Neteler]

Dylan Beaudette wrote on 08/25/2006 07:48 PM:
> On Friday 25 August 2006 10:12, Stephen Frost wrote:
>   
>> * Frank Warmerdam (warmerdam at pobox.com) wrote:
>>     
>>> Paul Ramsey wrote:
>>>       
>>>> The main thing that jumped out at me when we last had a thread on the
>>>> topic was how many different models people had of what "georaster" is.
>>>> Perhaps the simplest solution is "georaster is what oracle says it is".
>>>>         
>>> I am personally nervous about contributing a lot to such an effort
>>> without a better sense of how rasters are handled in other RDBMS type
>>> systems. I would like to do GeoRaster support for GDAL at some point, and
>>> then I might have more to offer.  We don't necesarily have to work like
>>> the GeoRaster but I would want to understand it well before adopting or
>>> dismissing it.
>>>       
>> Do the OpenGIS folks have anything for raster images?  What about
>> looking at what GRASS is doing?  Sorry if these are naive questions, I
>> havn't really delved into dealing with raster images yet but it's coming
>> up fast on my list of "things to add" to the systems I'm dealing with.
>>
>> 	Thanks,
>>
>> 		Stephen
>>     
>
> Cross-posting to the GRASS list...
>
> There are plans for a completely new raster data model in the future release 
> of GRASS. Perhaps synchronizing efforts would be a good thing. I for one 
> would love to have raster support in postgis.
>
>   

Hi,
after browsing quickly the discussion, it is not yet clear to me for
which purpose raster
support is really needed in PostGIS. Thinking of my 250GB MODIS data
here I doubt
that anything else than flat file storage makes sense. But I am not well
informed about
the possibilities.

Concerning the idea of raster/vector conversion: There is also the new
possibility
(still prototype) to program GRASS via Python or other SWIG'able language:
http://mpa.itc.it/markus/grass63progman/swig/

Some work on that will be presented at FOSS4G2006. My suggestion is to use
e.g. GRASS as GIS backbone for such operations. Then storage could be
done in
GRASS for raster maps (GDAL supports that) and operations triggered via
Python
or whatever.

We also have/had the idea to support virtual raster maps in GRASS (again via
GDAL, [1]) which could be interesting in this regard to avoid importing
into GRASS.

Best,
Markus

[1] GRASS raster "live links" proposal:
http://freegis.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/grass/gips/gip-0002.txt?rev=HEAD&content-type=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup