[postgis-users] Help me please)

[P O'Toole]

Роман –

>Hello everybody! I'm a beginner developer in Java and I want to create an
>application for building convenient transport logistics (for ordering a
>taxi, freight, search for fellow travelers, etc.). On the one hand, I would
>like the user to have a beautiful map displayed, but more importantly, this
>is the correct location, the construction of a route with several
>intermediate points. Fast data transfer and processing and rendering of
>maps.
>Help me please decide which cards and databases I should use? I started on
>Google maps, but I chose the PostgresSQL database. Then I learned about
>PostGIS. If I still focus on PostGIS, can I count on the help of developers
>who have experience?
>I will be grateful for any advice! Thank you.

AFAIK, PostGIS is the leader for spatial databases (by a good margin), at least in the open-source world (if not overall, though of course you will often find that bias on the PostGIS listserv).

Whether PostGIS is a good fit for you depends on your goals, your capabilities, and your resources (especially money and/or time). I say this because using PostGIS to support an application that does spatial processing generally requires maintaining a server-stack for the application to 'talk to' while it's running on a client machine. Said stack typically includes Postgres+PostGIS, and sometimes MapServer or Geoserver (to create images from the spatial data) plus a container (Apache Server, Wildfly, Glassfish, Websphere, Tomcat, or Jetty). I suppose you could have clients install such things locally, but this would increase the complexity of your installer. (Since you're writing in Java, I'm assuming you're thinking about a desktop application).

In exchange for the hassle of getting PostGIS up and running, you get a good community, low operating overhead, access to a bunch of functionality you might otherwise have to code yourself, and you also avoid having to pay for an ArcGIS Server license or similar.

If money is more plentiful than time, there are certainly closed-source products designed for the kind of routing logistics you're talking about, as well as online services such as ODL Live which will do analysis for you via REST.

Before you go reinventing the wheel, you might consider looking at the source of ODL Studio https://github.com/PGWelch/com.opendoorlogistics (which happens to be written in Java). If you're potentially willing to change languages (and are indeed thinking about something that gets installed locally), you could probably avoid a lot of trouble by just writing an addon (extension) for QGIS, packaging it with the road-data of the area(s) you care about, writing a little documentation, and calling it a day.

As I said, much depends on whether you intend to publish a free application or not, whether it installs locally or runs from a webpage, whether you plan to support multiple platforms (Windows, Android, iOS, Linux, etc.) whether you have specific clients already in mind, etc.

HTH.

- Patrick O'Toole

Application Developer
Wyoming Natural Diversity Database
UW Berry Biodiversity Conservation Center
Department 3381, 1000 E. University Av.
Laramie, WY 82071
P: 307-766-3018