[postgis-users] QGIS - PostGIS - ArcGIS Interaction

[Andreas Neumann]

 Paolo - are you trying to provoke me ;-) ? You know I am an advocate of 
 QGIS.

 But we have to be realistic. ESRI ArcGIS, with several thousand 
 employees, decades in development, tens-of thousand customers paying 
 their yearly regular license fees with a yearly income of multimillion 
 dollars - it is only natural that it is more powerful than an OS project 
 in development for some years by 20-30 active developers and a user base 
 of several thousand.

 QGIS is very promising and we use it every day and support it and 
 actively participate in improving it - and I believe that some day it 
 may even be better than big ESRI ArcGIS - but ArcGIS has several key 
 aspects that QGIS cannot deliver now:

 * 3D support (TIN, viewing, surface interpolation, multipatch support, 
 etc.)
 * curve support (arcs, splines, etc.)
 * cartographic rules (QGIS is getting there)
 * tons of 3rd party apps and a huge business network around it
 * more analytical tools and algorithms
 * better topology and network tools
 * domain specific apps tailored to specific nees: survey tools, utility 
 line documentation, etc.
 * and perhaps some more

 Of course it also has it weaknesses, and some strengths are perhaps 
 also weaknesses, e.g. the size of the organization makes it slower to 
 innovate.

 As much as I love and use QGIS, one has to be realistic and admit that 
 the big commercial alternatives sometimes play in a different liga. But 
 it won't stay like this forever ...

 Andreas

 On Thu, 16 Jun 2011 16:08:04 +0200, Paolo Cavallini wrote:
> Il giorno gio, 16/06/2011 alle 14.39 +0200, Andreas Neumann ha 
> scritto:
>> Thanks for the explanation. ArcGIS is still more powerful than QGIS,
>
> Are you *really* sure?
> http://donmeltz.com/blog/index.php/2011/06/10/arcgisqgis-faceoff/
> I'd be interested in knowing how.
> All the best.

-- 
 --
 Andreas Neumann
 Böschacherstrasse 10A
 8624 Grüt (Gossau ZH)
 Switzerland