[postgis-users] PostGIS case usages

Wed Oct 31 20:38:36 PDT 2018

Regina,

Some very good points.

I stopped using the term years ago given that I concentrate on applying spatial data and functions to solving business problems.

One problem is that the "spatial" industry is dominated by "GIS" vendors and practitioners: it isn't easy to find new non-GIS work.

In fact, I think this is one of the problems with FOSS4G technologies: they are marketed and sold as specific toolsets in opposition to the vendor products but on the same playground.

I have a few examples I can provide you with, just give me a bit of time to write them up.

As you going to FOSS4G in Melbourne this month?

regards
Simon

On Thu, 01 Nov 2018 10:17:04 +1100, Regina Obe <lr at pcorp.us> wrote:

> Tom,
>
> That's a pretty nice use case and one I've thought of coming from a Bioelectronics/Biomechanics educational background.
>
> I think a lot more people would be using PostGIS if they saw it as a tool set of tools for visualizing and analyzing space, instead of "a toolset for GIS"
> The GIS word seems to be a turn-off for a lot of people who have spatial problems to solve but don't think of themselves as GIS practioners.
>
> I much prefer the term "Spatial" than GIS because it really focuses on what I think makes PostGIS great - "A tool for analyzing space"
>
> Thanks,
> Regina
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: postgis-users [mailto:postgis-users-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf
>> Of Tom Kazimiers
>> Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2018 3:16 PM
>> To: PostGIS Users Discussion <postgis-users at lists.osgeo.org>
>> Cc: 'PostGIS Development Discussion' <postgis-devel at lists.osgeo.org>
>> Subject: Re: [postgis-users] PostGIS case usages
>>
>> Hi Regina,
>>
>> It might not really fit the book, because it's not exactly GIS, but our PostGIS
>> use case is certainly an interesting one as well: As a software engineer at the
>> Howard Hughes Medical Institute, I work on a collaborative neuron
>> reconstruction and analysis software called CATMAID [1] [2] (screenshot: [3]),
>> which is used for neuroscience research. We use PostGIS to represent neurons
>> in a 3D space. They consist of 3D points that reference their parent nodes or
>> are the root [=soma of neuron] if they have no parent). Together with
>> synapses, point clouds and TIN meshes for modeling compartments in a
>> dataset, they model the spatial aspects of our neuroscience world. Users
>> create those neuron reconstructions manually in a collaborative fashion plus
>> segmentation programs can be used as additional data source. Using its
>> spatial indices, PostGIS helps us to quickly query neurons in a particular field
>> of view. The space of a single project contains sometimes 100s of millions of
>> interconnected individual points. We also do bounding box intersection
>> queries between neurons and compartment meshes, which then refine in the
>> front-end by doing more precise intersection tests.
>>
>> This software is used by quite a few research labs and as far as I know they all
>> do their own hosting with a dedicated server and this is what we do as well.
>> The reason being mainly that wth larger datasets, we benefit from machines
>> with a lot of RAM (>256G), fast SSD/NVMe drives and many CPUs as well as
>> fast local data access for e.g. image data.
>>
>> Thanks so much for making PostGIS work well in non-GIS contexts too---it
>> makes my live much easier! Looking forward to the book!
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Tom
>>
>> [1] https://www.catmaid.org
>> [2] https://github.com/catmaid/CATMAID
>> [3] https://twitter.com/tomkazimiers/status/1057657843174772737
>>
>> On Fri, Oct 26, 2018 at 01:05:52PM -0400, Regina Obe wrote:
>> >Hey all.  So we've been in talks with our editor about having a 3rd
>> >Edition of PostGIS hopefully to be released around the same time as PostGIS
>> 3.0.
>> >
>> >I think they are more or less sold on the idea except they did ask
>> >about current market share and usage.
>> >
>> >Part of the reason for that is our previous editions focused a lot on
>> >"How do I use this function or do this weird sounding thing that only
>> >GIS people can make sense of"  instead of "How do I do this real world
>> thing"
>> >
>> >So one of the thoughts was having our table of contents be more like
>> >"How do I do this with PostGIS" in somewhat laymen terms that most
>> >people can relate to - like Political Districting, Real Estate analysis
>> >(walk scores, elevation measurements to determine viablility of
>> >building on a plot of
>> >land)
>> > without scaring people off with "real world things" they can't relate
>> >to or in overly techy terms.
>> >
>> >Also since the 2nd Edition (which was in 2015 super ancient now since
>> >the New shiny version at the time was 2.1 and 2.1 is not even supported
>> >anymore).
>> >Other major thing changed is a lot of people are deploying PostGIS on
>> >cloud offerings like Amazon RDS, Microsoft Azure, and Google PostgreSQL
>> >for Cloud so we plan to cover a bit about some things relevant in those
>> >that may not be relevant when deploying on your own server.
>> >
>> >That said, if people can respond with what things they are currently
>> >using PostGIS for and also what hosting they are using for PostGIS,
>> >that would be helpful for us to get a better idea of focus points.
>> >
>> >It'd be great if you posted on the list, but if you are shy or need
>> >your usage anonymized, you can write directly to me.
>> >
>> >Thanks,
>> >Regina
>> >
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-- 
Regards
Simon
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