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

[Ben Madin]

G'day Regina,

On 31/12/2008, at 5:00 AM, "Paragon Corporation" <lr at pcorp.us> wrote:

> 1) How you use PostGIS?

We are using it to manage and store and analyse data on trade, and  
linked to MapServer to produce outputs. We primarily chose it because  
we can dynamically manage the data being available at different  
resolutions on the fly, and convert point data to lines, find which  
parts of it are within polygons and look for bottlenecks. Although we  
previously used MySQL, this has driven the increased use of PostgreSQL.

We have also used it in disease mapping and spread applications, which  
we are likely to use more in the future.


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

The native integration into PostgreSQL at one end, and the lovely  
linking to MapServer at the other make it ideal for our use,  
especially because nothing satisfies a client (anyone really) more  
than being able to look at their data on a dynamic map.

We are also using R for statistical analysis of data, so being able to  
pre-process in the database rather than in the R environment has  
simplified analysis.


> 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?

In reverse, I would probably buy it, but one of the strengths in my  
limited experience is the mailing list. The PostGIS documentation is  
sharp and to the point, and the examples are certainly good enough to  
get started. The mailing list (and archives) are exceptional and it  
would seem to me that most of the people trying to use it are working  
through to a point happily by themselves and then asking sensible  
stuff... and getting reasonable respectful answers. The real benefit  
of a book might be for those people that want a slightly more guided  
introduction, or aren't quite so ambitious in what they think PostGIS  
should be able to do for them to help them to find out just what it  
can do.

Good luck with the book. I very rarely use desktop GIS for any  
processing any more, it is faster (and easier to repeat) using postgis.

cheers

Ben


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Ben Madin
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