[postgis-users] Promoting PostgreSQL and PostGIS to wider business intelligence community

ruvenml at beamerbrooks.com ruvenml at beamerbrooks.com
Fri Sep 25 10:14:26 PDT 2020


Let me get this straight: are the end users the ones using SQL to create 
these derived/blended data sets or is the actual creation done by the 
support or data library team, who are SQL specialists?

Ruven Brooks


On 9/25/2020 10:47 AM, Basques, Bob (CI-StPaul) wrote:
>
> All,
>
> I almost jumped over this thread from the beginning because I wasn’t 
> understanding the original question very well, mostly based on my own 
> labels for these types of services/datasets.  I reference things like 
> this as “derived” data.  The actual source data doesn’t exist (unless 
> it gets cached for performance reasons) but rather it a data blending 
> via a SQL call.
>
> I agree with other comments here too, related to this type of product 
> usually being the sort of thing that can’t be easily done by most GIS 
> apps out of the box.  Also provides for a pipelining of processes of 
> sorts for sudo processing on the fly.
>
> I’ve got a few different examples of this, some fairly simple, some 
> very complicated that are treated as datasets by the end users, 
> because the SQL is embed into a config, like a Mapserver Mapfile for 
> example.  More and more of our datasets are being created in this 
> fashion vs historically sourcing a “real” dataset directly.
>
> In general the end users are starting to think and expect this type of 
> analysis approach to the data, especially related to time indexing and 
> looking at data over time.  Consequently, this is pushing me (us) to 
> start thinking about time indexing of data and how to store datasets 
> accordingly.
>
> Bobb
>
> *From: *postgis-users <postgis-users-bounces at lists.osgeo.org> on 
> behalf of Shaozhong SHI <shishaozhong at gmail.com>
> *Reply-To: *PostGIS Discussion <postgis-users at lists.osgeo.org>
> *Date: *Friday, September 25, 2020 at 3:11 AM
> *To: *PostGIS Discussion <postgis-users at lists.osgeo.org>
> *Subject: *Re: [postgis-users] Promoting PostgreSQL and PostGIS to 
> wider business intelligence community
>
> *Think Before You Click: *This email originated *outside *our 
> organization.
>
> All very interesting and useful points!
>
> I am also thinking about data blending and new data production on the 
> data service platform for supporting the wider Business Intelligence 
> community.
>
> Surely, we need excellent examples to show them that we make data 
> ready for their consumption, and are here to help them.
>
> Regards,
>
> Shao
>
> On Fri, 25 Sep 2020 at 08:37, Andreas Neumann <a.neumann at carto.net 
> <mailto:a.neumann at carto.net>> wrote:
>
>     Hi,
>
>     In our GIS team (small team of 10, local government, province
>     level) we use a lot of SQL in collaboration with Gradle/GRETL and
>     Jenkins for our automated data flows and statistics. It is amazing
>     how much analysis and data aggregation you can do with SQL only -
>     without having to touch QGIS or ArcGIS or any other so called
>     "business intelligence" tools (that are often quite expensive).
>
>     Every new employee that wants to join our team has to have SQL
>     knowledge - that's a prerequisite - or they wouldn't get the job.
>     Most of our employees are not programmers though.
>
>     I also teach PostgreSQL/Postgis training courses (2-3 days
>     usually) - a lot of the participants are not programmers but still
>     manage to do analysis with SQL. Typical course participants are
>     scientists, people working at engineering companies or government.
>
>     So - I do think there is a significant number of people who use
>     SQL, but aren't programmers.
>
>     Andreas
>
>     On 2020-09-25 00:09, ruvenml at beamerbrooks.com
>     <mailto:ruvenml at beamerbrooks.com> wrote:
>
>         I doubt whether PostGIS has any direct value whatsoever for
>         desktop application users.  At a very minimum,  using PostGIS
>         directly requires a  knowledge of SQL.  In fact, the more
>         knowledge of SQL a user has, the more powerful PostGIS will
>         be.   SQL is usually taught in a database course which, in
>         many computer science curriculums, is taught in the second or
>         third year, not to end users in another occupation.
>
>         Business intelligence systems such as Power BI and Tableau can
>         connect directly to PostGIS data bases and provide end user
>         commands and operations for querying and modifying those
>         databases.  GIS systems such as ArcGIS and QGIS provide
>         similar capabilities.   End users can get nearly all of the
>         power of PostGIS without having to learn anything outside of
>         the business intelligence system or the GIS system.
>
>         PostGIS is probably best reserved for people who have a
>         programming background and whose jobs or avocations involve
>         doing things that are difficult or impossible to do in
>         existing business intelligence or GIS applications. There seem
>         to be more than enough people like that to keep the PostGIS
>         developers quite busy.
>
>         Ruven Brooks
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>         On 9/24/2020 3:58 PM, Shaozhong SHI wrote:
>
>             Though we have got some good examples of serving data
>             to wider business intelligence community, we are still
>             interested in finding excellent, compelling examples for
>             showing the value of PostgreSQL/PostGIS as a data service
>             to desktop application users.
>
>             I just wonder whether there are excellent examples, for
>             general users to appreciate?
>
>
>
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