[postgis-users] ST_Transform troubles

[Frans Knibbe]

On 2011-06-25 17:59, Paul Ramsey wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 2:57 AM, Frans Knibbe<frans.knibbe at geodan.nl>  wrote:
>
>> Or in a smaller nutshell: PostGIS says it complies with a standard but does
>> not comply to that standard.
> Regarding axis orientation, we are in the company of Oracle, ESRI,
> Microsoft, IBM, MapInfo, Intergraph. Everyone except I guy from EPSG I
> met at an OGC meeting once and (apparently) you. I sleep OK at night.
I sleep very well at night too. Sometimes even in the daytime :-)

To me the argument "We are ignoring the standard because everyone else 
is doing the same" comes across as rather weak. The whole point of 
standards is that you comply with them, otherwise they are useless. I 
fully agree that having different axis orders is a big nuisance. But not 
complying with standards can be a nuisance too.

I, as a human, can take a look at geographic coordinates and guess 
whether the axis orientation is correct. But what if those coordinates 
are processed by some kind of automated procedure? How is a computer to 
know that it is not to interpret data as they are presented? That is 
exactly the problem I am having now. I want to export WKT from PostGIS, 
indicating that the CRS is epsg:4326. I have no knowledge of who, when 
and how these data will be used.

But it seems I have found my question answered. If I have a problem with 
the axis order in PostGIS I should solve it myself, for the moment at least.

By the way, I just found an OGC note about the issue: 
http://www.ogcnetwork.net/node/491 (Axis Order Policy Guidance). For 
those interested in the subject: please read it. It is a very short 
document.

> P.
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