[postgis-users] data base structure for holding climate data

[Kirk R. Wythers]

On Oct 2, 2006, at 10:22 AM, Obe, Regina wrote:

> I would go with the single timestamp function datatype. Note - I think
> you want timestamp instead of date if you plan to do anything with  
> hours
> minutes and seconds, but otherwise date would be fine.
>
> It's a lot more flexible when you are trying to aggregate data or
> compare data over month, years, weeks, days, minutes etc. since you  
> can
> then easily use the built-in postgres date functions.
>
> I'm assuming also you will do the same for lat lon - store them as
> postgis geom point types to take advantage of the postgis spatial
> functions.

Obe, How is storing lat lon as geom points different from reading  
them into postgis as simple xy coordinates?

Thanks,

Kirk


>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: postgis-users-bounces at postgis.refractions.net
> [mailto:postgis-users-bounces at postgis.refractions.net] On Behalf Of  
> Kirk
> R. Wythers
> Sent: Monday, October 02, 2006 11:11 AM
> To: PostGIS Discussion Users
> Subject: [postgis-users] data base structure for holding climate data
>
> I am curious as to the consensus approach to handling dates in  
> postgis?
> I have gathered up a fairly large collection of climate data. The date
> fields however, came parsed in the form (year,month,day). I want to  
> set
> up a postgres database to hold this data with a location structure  
> along
> the lines of:
>
> mn_climate=# \d sites
>                  Table "public.sites"
>       Column     |         Type          | Modifiers
> ----------------+-----------------------+-----------
> site_id        | integer               |
> site_shortname | character varying(8)  |
> site_name      | character varying(50) |
> lat            | numeric               |
> lon            | numeric               |
> utm_e          | numeric               |
> utm_n          | numeric               |
> Indexes:
>      "sites_site_id_key" UNIQUE, btree (site_id)
>
>
> And tie this "site" table to a second "clim" table that holds the  
> actual
> meteorological data. However, I am inclined to concatenate the year,
> month, day data into a single "date" data type of the form year-
> month-day-hour-minute-second (yyyy-mm-dd-hh-mm-ss). Does this make  
> sense
> to you all? If anyone can re-direct me before I do something dumb  
> in way
> I set this up, I would appreciate it.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Kirk
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