[Qgis-developer] QGIS database functionality

[Barry Rowlingson]

On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 7:44 AM, <Mark.Gibbons at csiro.au> wrote:
> Hello,
> I'm looking to develop an application that will act like a loosely-coupled server. It will store geospatial data of various formats in the database, and will serve requests from other applications to get / put data in the database.
> Is QGIS suitable for this?
> Can data from the data store be retrieved via the server and rendered separately?
> Is QGIS efficient for continuous updating of data and continuous retrieval of data, for example so that a moving object can be easily rendered?
> Does QGIS support using Oracle / Oracle Spatial as the dbms?
> Does the QGIS API let you access the database easily?
>
> I had a look at pyQGIS and it looks like you connect to the database with the dataSourceURI, from then on everything with the database is automated? When you create a new vector it automatically saves it in the database?
>

 Qgis is really intended as a graphical desktop GIS client, so for
what you describe as a 'loosely-coupled' (whatever that means)
'server' you might be adding too many layers of complexity by using
the Qgis API for database access...

 Qgis uses the GDAL and OGR API libraries for data access, so you
would probably benefit from using those directly in your application.
C, C++, and Python bindings directly to GDAL and OGR exist. Your
system will then be able to use any of the OGR data sources for vector
data - this may include Oracle Spatial, but does include PostGIS,
which is my choice of spatial database (Free, Open Source, powerful
and marvellous).

Barry