[postgis-users] Book recommendations, geospatial gangsta posturing, and more

[Brent Wood]

--- dnrg <dananrg at yahoo.com> wrote:
<snip>

> QGIS has great potential for being part of GLAMP. :-)
> (Quantum GIS +) Grass + Linux + Apache + MapServer +
> PostgreSQL/PostGIS.
> 
> That's the combination of FOSS / FOSS GIS that
> initially strikes me as a good, de facto FOSS GIS
> suite, in the spirit of something like LAMP. The GRASS
> integration in QGIS is a real plus. Who else has it?
> I'm looking forward to playing with that. 


Slightly OT, but I do mention PostGIS & follow the thread:

What the commercial sector (IMHO) is missing, is when they follow standards, it
is a pretty much token gesture, and they still generally try to tie customers
into proprietary standards.

What sits behind mapserver, QGIS & many FOSS GIS packages is shared libraries.
GDAL/OGR being one & Proj another. 

This is interoperability by design, not as an afterthought, & credit must go to
those (Hi Frank :-) who have provided these tools so that QGIS & Mapserver can
look so good, and a fantastic FOSS spatially enabled RDBMS which can be pretty
seamlessly integrated with desktop GIS & Web mapping.

Dan is interested in spatial statistics. One of the most powerful stats &
modeling tools available is R. Again, this is reasonably easy to use with
GRASS, or to read Postgres data, but now, using PL/R (thanks Joe, I need to do
more with this!!), with any tool that supports GDAL/OGR via R commands embedded
in Postgres SQL.

Another personal favourite, GMT for publication quality cartographic output of
a very high standard. With ogr now supporting GMT & PostGIS formats, it enables
powerful data driven cartographic production tools.

In combination, these (& other FOSS offerings) support the construction of
enterprise GIS suites which can rival or exceed the capabilities of commercial
packages.

And with OSGEO, an umbrella foundation to help take many of these forward.


It's a great time to be a FOSS GIS user, and looks to be getting even better!


Cheers all,

  Brent Wood