[postgis-users] Re: if i use postgis, is it true that i'll then have to worry about supporting only 1 database??

[Bart van den Eijnden (OSGIS)]

"So, if you think direct editing of SDO_GEOMETRY from ArcGIS (a) works 
and (b) works well then perhaps you have a case to believe that direct 
editing of PostGIS is on the way too."

AFAIK: the answer to a) and b) is both no. You'll always need SDE in 
between., if you use SDO_GEOMETRY.

I would love to be proven wrong though in this case :-)

Best regards,
Bart

Paul Ramsey schreef:
>
> On 8-Feb-08, at 1:39 AM, dnrg wrote:
>
>> ESRI tells me that, at the ArcGIS Desktop release 9.3,
>> you'll be able to edit PostGIS data as core
>> functionality. No SDE required. This will open doors
>> and minds I hope. Paul, any comments on that?
>
> I'll believe it when I see it. Different elements of the ESRI 
> marketing apparatus are interpreting the "support PostGIS" 
> announcement differently. The most believable story I have heard is 
> that ArcServer (nee SDE) will support a PostGIS geometry type, in much 
> the same way as it support the Oracle SDO_GEOMETRY type.  So, if you 
> think direct editing of SDO_GEOMETRY from ArcGIS (a) works and (b) 
> works well then perhaps you have a case to believe that direct editing 
> of PostGIS is on the way too.
>
>> Paul, will PostGIS ever have versioning functionality
>> for editing workflows similar to ArcSDE? Guess that
>> would pervert the data, and then PostGIS would "own"
>> the data in a way like ArcSDE does presently. Still,
>> many shops find versioning valuable for workflows.
>
> Database lock-in is a fact of life, simple because it is hard to 
> migrate databases, no matter how open they are. The best versioning 
> solution I have seen is the Oracle implementation, which does 
> "workspaces" using the basic MVCC versioning information available 
> per-tuple.  I would love to have that, but frankly it requires a lot 
> of core PostgreSQL back-end work, and the PgSQL core team doesn't have 
> workspaces as a high (or even low) priority item.
>
> If we built a versioning system ala ESRI (side tables and references), 
> we could do a somewhat better job, because it would be in the database 
> level, not the middle-ware. However, it would have the same 
> limitations in terms of requiring client software that knew what the 
> heck to do with the stuff.
>
> "Why not."  Explain your use cases that cannot be met any other way.  
> There are some, but they are dwarfed by other use cases that have 
> higher priority, in my opinion.  I see way more people using PostGIS 
> for geoprocessing, for example, so a more robust and faster overlay 
> facility seems like an important thing.  Ditto for more core geodetic 
> support.
>
> P.
>
>>
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-- 
Bart van den Eijnden
OSGIS, Open Source GIS
bartvde at osgis.nl
http://www.osgis.nl