Top PostGIS Alternatives

PostGIS is a very reliable choice in the PostSQL database section, as a spatial database extender. Users can either compile the software from various sources or use a binary installer from their site. They have added separate instruction for any other source version with compiling instructions too.

PostGIS Feature Overview

As for the Binary distributions, there are separate versions for various operating systems given too. Users can get setup for Windows OS, OSX, Red Hat, Ubuntu, and OpenSUSE/SUSE OS. Each of these OS have a different set of instruction to install the program, which isn’t too difficult.

PostGIS has an enabling process since it is offered in the form of additional extension. To get access to entire features and usable interface, they have given few books as well as tutorials for several versions of PostGIS. It brings extra elements like geometry, raster, geography, and other database-related fields in the PostgreSQL DB, along with the addition of useful functions and indices. This process is accomplished by a loadable C library and adding the structures and functions into the built library.

PostGIS Libraries and Operators

There are several libraries from C and C++, which are also utilized here, viz., GEOS, Proj4, GDAL, JSON-C, and LibXML2. Each of the given libraries are open source and readily accessible. Many popular software products to use this database, of which some of them are ArcGIS, Kosmo, Mapnik, MapGuide, TerraView, etc. The geometry type in PostGIS can list out points, polygons, multi-points, line-strings, and geometry points. Spatial is useful for finding the geometry interactions with DE-9IM.

It even houses spatial operators that aid in determining geospatial measurements and set operations. This includes elements like area, length, distance, perimeter, union, symmetric differences, etc. It offers fast and efficient spatial querying with R-tree. PostGIS also provides better performance to the query plans with the help of index selectivity support, along with WKT Raster. The use of such simple and efficient parameters allows us to yield faster performance. Overall, PostGIS can work very well for individuals and business app developers too.