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

[pcreso at pcreso.com]

> 
> So to make a decent case for a book, can each of you in
> your own words
> describe
> 
> 1) How you use PostGIS?

Several ways/reasons/purposes in a research organisation (NIWA New Zealand)

We use PostGIS for:

 managing a national topo vector database as a back end for
 a Mapserver site using WMS to provide background layers for
 several national web mapping applications

 A near real-time database at sea for data captured from numerous 
 instruments on a research vessel, with lat/long so all data
 is spatially related

 A summary database on shore of research vessel instrument
 readings, with a web mapping (mapserver/python) interface.
 
 A database supporting a data management & analysis system built
 for a 16 month fisheries survey in the Arabian Sea on a chartered
 commercial trawler. Used to collect & manage trip, station, catch,
 biological, meteorological, hydrographic and oceanographic data
 captured during the survey. (subject of a presentation at this  
 symposium: http://www.esl.co.jp/Sympo/4th/) Note, this database was  
 recently installed in Oman for their own use.

 Databases for managing & spatially analysing (using PostGIS 
 grids) a variety of datasets of commercial fisheries catch & 
 effort information. Also usin R. (Subject of a presentation &
 paper in the proceedings at the above symposium) 

 A generic Antarctic database supporting several fisheries, 
 oceanographic, hydrographic & ecological research programs studying
 Antarctic & Southern Ocean processes & systems. 

 Currently also looking at PostGIS for:
 replacing Oracle in an ArcSDE implementation managing a national
   marine regional bathymetric database,
 managing a national hydrological database for NZ, with catchments, 
   drainage, river, river flow data, etc 
 providing spatially enabled RDBMS capabilities to support regional & 
   national climate & haazard warning systems in the Pacific for 
   several nations.

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

>From my perspective, there are a few critical aspects that make PostGIS ideal for our situation, and that are not available from any other spatial RDBMS:

Capability: it is a fully functional fast & powerful RDBMS able to manage, query & analyse spatial data with NO other applications required for many aspects of my work.

Interoperability: we can use it easily with Arc systems, natively as a geodatabase, directly through WMS/WFS, and via shapefile export (ogr2ogr & pgsql2shape). Also with QGIS, R, gvSIG, geoserver, FAO Geonetworks, Matlab (via ODBC), etc...

Portability: (two aspects under one heading), we can use it anywhere, on shore, in the field, at sea, under BSD, Linux, Unix, Windows as we desire,
with no licences to pay for, install, manage, expire inconveniently, etc.

Standards based. This is implicit in the above aspects, but I believe it is worth including in it's own right. Any GIS suite, using any mix of applications, if is built using common industry standards (ANSI, ISO, SQL, OGC, ...) is compatible with PostGIS with relatively little work. eg: we funded the migration of Atlas (www.atlasmd.com) from a completely different RDBMS to PostGIS for spatial data & WMS support, the entire migration took perhaps 3 weeks, and the vendor is now looking to migrate all versions/installations to PostGIS due to the performance, reliability & functional benefits it provides. 


> 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?

Both personally, and through our library, we have purchased several Postgres, Mapserver, GRASS, FOSS GIS books. I can guarantee a few copies would be purchased of any PostGIS book, as our use of PostGIS is rapidly expanding. (NIWA has about 600 staff, and many science staff would probably buy personal copies as a reference/tutorial)

At the above mentioned symposium, with many countries represented, some 80% of presenters from Asia, Europe, Africa, Australasia & N & S America, were directly using FOSS tools, such as mapserver, R or PostGIS. The FAO is supporting the development of Geonetworks, a standards based metadata application for spatial data, which works well with PostGIS.

I recently ran an in-house workshop on Postgres & Postgis for NIWA staff. I'd anticipated some 15 or so attendees. I finished with two workshops, of about 20 people in each, with staff from some government departments also attending. I thought I'd had a reasonable ear to the ground for Postgres & PostGIS use in my organisation, but found we had others who'd been using it for years on their own projects. Feedback was positive & interest & uptake in PostGIS & related tools is growing rapidly. (I've been carefully watering it for several years & it seems to be working :-)

I don't see the global market as enormous, as it is a niche, but I believe it is enough to make such a book worthwhile, and I'd expect the market to increase rapidly over the next few years as multinational initiatives, especially in third world countries with limited budgtets for licences, 
such as geonetworks, continue to drive the growth of affordable standards based spatial data management systems world wide.    

Good luck!!!!

    Brent Wood

> 
> Of course I'll also need some official download stats
> etc. which hopefully
> the Refractions group can help out with.  I think Mark
> Cave-Ayland had
> posted some stats a while back, but can't find them.
> 
> Thanks,
> Regina
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> postgis-users mailing list
> postgis-users at postgis.refractions.net
> http://postgis.refractions.net/mailman/listinfo/postgis-users