[postgis-users] The Old Who is using PostGIS survey again?

[Davi Pires]

> 1) How you use PostGIS?

We use it to store and query data about routes that the users of our
ridesharing system make. In the beginning of the project, matching
similar routes was the part we were most clueless about, and we were
surprised to see how easy it was to accomplish with PostGIS. Also,
using indexes on geographic data made complex queries run very fast.

> 2) What you find useful about it over anything else?

Easy integration with existing tools, both PostgreSQL-related and
GIS-related. For us, using Hibernate Spatial made it even more
trivial.

> 3) Why you think there should be any book written focused on its use and of
> course if such a thing were to exist, would you buy it?

GPS's are making their way into all sorts of devices [iPhone and
android, for starters] , and soon users will want a lot more from it
than merely driving directions. The tools to effectively handling this
amount of data are not well known to the majority of developers.
Therefore, a book on PostGIS would ease the learning curve of the
technology, and foster innovation in this area.

I would certainly buy the book, for it would help us to train the next
developers and mantainers of the system. Also, I'm sure we don't
know/use everything there's to know/use about PostGIS. ;-)

Good luck with the book!

Davi Pires