PostGIS Cookbook - Second Edition: Store, organize, manipulate, and analyze spatial data

Key Features

• Import and export geographic data from the PostGIS database using the available tools
• Maintain, optimize, and fine-tune spatial data for long-term viability
• Utilize the parallel support functionality that was introduced in PostgreSQL 9.6

Book Description

PostGIS is a spatial database that integrates advanced storage and analysis of vector and raster data, and is remarkably flexible and powerful. PostGIS provides support for geographic objects to the PostgreSQL object-relational database and is currently the most popular open source spatial databases.

If you want to explore the complete range of PostGIS techniques and expose the related extensions, then this book is for you.

This book is a comprehensive guide on PostGIS tools and concepts which are required to manage, manipulate, and analyse spatial data in PostGIS. It will cover key spatial data manipulation tasks, explaining not only how each task is performed, but also why. It provides practical guidance allowing you to safely take advantage of the advanced technology in PostGIS in order to simplify your spatial database administration tasks. Furthermore, you will learn to take advantage of basic and advanced vector, raster, and routing approaches along with the concepts of data maintenance, optimization, and performance, which will help you to integrate these into a large ecosystem of desktop and web tools.

By the end, you will be armed with all the tools and instructions you need to both manage the spatial database system and make better decisions as your project's requirements evolve.

What you will learn

• Import and export geographic data from the PostGIS database using the available tools
• Structure spatial data using the functionality provided by the combination of PostgreSQL and PostGIS
• Work with a set of PostGIS functions to perform basic and advanced vector analyses
• Connect PostGIS with Python
• Learn to use programming frameworks around PostGIS
• Maintain, optimize, and fine-tune spatial data for long-term viability
• Explore the 3D capabilities of PostGIS, including LiDAR point clouds and point clouds derived from Structure from Motion (SfM) techniques
• Distribute 3D models through the Web using the X3D standard
• Use PostGIS to develop powerful GIS web applications using Open Geospatial Consortium web standards
• Master PostGIS Raster

Mayra Zurbarán is a Ph.D. student with a BSc in Computer Science at Universidad del Norte. Her research is focused on location information privacy and citizen science with the use of GIS, especially with free and open source software tools. She is a promoter of the Geo for All initiative from the OSGeo Foundation and contributes to the development of QGIS plugins. She is keen about ethical data management, making beautiful maps and encouraging community mapping on OpenStreetMap for humanitarian causes. She is a Pythonista and a Django developer with a preference for the PostgreSQL database.

Pedro M. Wightman is a system engineer from Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla, Colombia. He did his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in computer science and engineering from the University of South Florida, Tampa, USA. He is an associate professor and the director of the Systems Engineering Department at Universidad del Norte. His research interests include location-based information systems, especially in topics related to user privacy, topology control in wireless sensor networks, and smart cities implementation in developing countries. Wightman is also the author of two technical books on LBS and WSN, and a novice writer of short stories and, hopefully soon enough, sci-fi novels.