PostGIS in Action - Softcover

Regina Obe; Leo Hsu

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1935182269 ISBN 13: 9781935182269

Publisher: Manning, 2011

Synopsis

Whether you're canvassing a congressional district, managing a sales region, mapping city bus schedules, or analyzing local cancer rates, thinking spatially opens up limitless possibilities for database users. PostGIS, a freely available open-source spatial database extender, can help you answer questions that you could not answer using a mere relational database. Its feature set equals or surpasses proprietary alternatives, allowing you to create location-aware queries and features with just a few lines of SQL code.
PostGIS in Action is the first book devoted entirely to PostGIS. It will help both new and experienced users write spatial queries to solve real-world problems. For those with experience in more traditional relational databases, this book provides a background in vector-based GIS so you can quickly move to analyzing, viewing, and mapping data. Advanced users will learn how to optimize queries for maximum speed, simplify geometries for greater efficiency, and create custom functions suited specifically to their applications. It also discusses the new features available in PostgreSQL 9.0 /9.1 and PostGIS 2.0 and provides tutorials on using additional open source GIS tools in conjunction with PostGIS.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

This book isn't a substitute for the official PostGIS documentation. The official PostGIS
documentation does a good job of introducing you to the myriad of functions available
in PostGIS and provides examples on how to use each. It won't tell you how to
combine all these functions into a recipe to solve your problems. That is the purpose
of our book. Although it doesn't cover all functions available in PostGIS, this book
does cover the more commonly used or interesting ones and gives you the skills you
need to combine them to solve classic and more esoteric but interesting problems in
spatial analysis and modeling.

While you can use this book as a source of reference, we recommend that you do
visit the official PostGIS site and download or peruse the documentation.

This book focuses on two-dimensional non-curved Cartesian vector geometries.
Although it is primarily about writing spatial queries against 2D vector geometries, we
provide introductions to the following ancillary topics:

• Creating 3D vector geometries
• Creating curved geometries
• Creating and querying the geodetic geography data type
• Working with raster data using the companion raster data type (integrated in
  PostGIS 2.0)

While the main purpose of this book is the use of PostGIS, we'd fall short of our mission
if we neglected to provide some perspective on the landscape it lives in. PostGIS is
not an island and rarely works alone. To complete the cycle, we also include the following:

• An extensive appendix that covers PostgreSQL in great detail from setup, to
  backup, to security management, as well as the fundamentals of SQL and creating
  functions and other objects in it
• Several chapters dedicated to the use of PostGIS in web mapping, viewing using
  desktop tools, PostgreSQL PL languages commonly used with PostGIS, and extra
  open source add-ons such as the TIGER geocoder, pgRouting, PL/R, and PL/
  Python

From the Back Cover:

What's Inside

• An introduction to spatial databases
• Geometry types, functions, and queries
• Applying PostGIS to real-world problems
• Extending PostGIS to web and desktop applications

Familiarity with relational database concepts is helpful
but not required.

About this edition

• Publisher: Manning
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1935182269
• ISBN 13: 9781935182269
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 520