Tagged Questions

Spatial database is a database that is optimized to store and query data that is related to objects in space, including points, lines and polygons.

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27
votes
3answers
802 views

What coordinate system should be used to store geography data for celestial coordinates?

I am doing an astronomy project. I want to have the information about our images stored in a spatially enabled database. This, I would think, should be a very easy special case for GIS functions ...
22
votes
7answers
605 views

GIS Software Choice for a small university research centre

I need to choose a GIS system for a small university research centre. We are handling a broad range of data, (for example, numerical tidal analyses, weather data, poverty, isolated economic activity, ...
22
votes
6answers
2k views

Options for ArcGIS Desktop SpatiaLite support?

SpatiaLite is playing an increasing role in my organization. As it stands now, using SpatiaLite alongside ArcGIS Desktop requires an amount of importing and exporting of data that isn't always ...
19
votes
6answers
475 views

Open access repository of general GIS spatial data?

As a newcomer to using GIS for research, I am wondering if there are online repositories for spatial data, similar to package repositories for Linux distributions. For instance, I would be able to ...
18
votes
4answers
1k views

Would PostGIS offer an advantage over MySQL for a produce farm application?

I have a web app that stores the locations of farms in West Michigan. You can search for a product (e.g. "broccoli") and it will show you all the farms that grow that product. Right now I'm using ...
18
votes
7answers
919 views

Spatial databases learning resources for newbies

Would be taking up a course on spatial databases next semester. Would anybody know a newbie friendly introductory resource? A vendor neutral one would be preferable. Thanks.
18
votes
3answers
1k views

When should you NOT use a spatial index?

I am asking this because I was mainly working with Oracle but for the past year I've been doubling with PostGIS and SQLServer 2008. Most spatial functions in Oracle won't work without a spatial index ...
18
votes
3answers
560 views

What are the differences between spatial databases?

What is the difference between Oracle Spatial, PostGIS, SQLServer2008, SpatiaLite, and MySQL in terms of their spatial support. Are there specific use cases where each shines. What might you want to ...
17
votes
3answers
3k views

How to store lines and polygons in JSON documents?

Looking at the increasing NoSQL movement and considering that databases like MongoDB offers a new perspective in flexible data storage for GIS. What is the best way to store lines and polygons in ...
17
votes
3answers
3k views

What is the difference between ESRI's SDE and Geospatial dbs?

When would you want to use ESRI SDE (I think it is called Server but I forget the level - please feel free to edit) versus a spatially enabled database. What are the trade-offs on either side? What ...
16
votes
2answers
217 views

(When) should I use a GIS-enabled database?

I am a long-time programmer, new to GIS. I am trying to get a feel for the database aspects of GIS and I understand that there are some databases which are specialized for GIS use. Basically I am ...
16
votes
2answers
207 views

Is there a standard data model for storing traffic volumes, layout, lanes, timing and phasing information?

I am at a crossroads where I want to store more than a scenarios worth of project data from a Synchro study, but do not want to keep this data in a series of text files. The data output by Synchro is ...
15
votes
6answers
3k views

What are the best databases for storing spatial data? Pros and Cons

A couple of days ago I installed the demo of spatialware 4.9 from MapInfo into my SQL Server 2005 install and loaded all the larger dataset into it. I was quite impressed with the performance vs the ...
15
votes
7answers
2k views

File Geodatabase Open API

Any ESRI boffins (insiders) know when this will be available? 2010, 2011? FINAL UPDATE now released 20th January 2011 - Can be downloaded here - ...
13
votes
5answers
309 views

What in-depth spatial database systems tutorials exist?

Is there a good tutorial that explains in depth the internals of a GIS and a spatial database system such as PostGIS with examples and without any background assumption? I'm specifically looking for ...
13
votes
6answers
913 views

Is good database design less important for a spatial database

I have a strong feeling that database design and normalisation often comes in second hand when dealing with spatial data. With software costing a fortune and databases with over 100 fields tables I ...
13
votes
5answers
5k views

Is a Country/State/City Database available?

I asked this question Stack Overflow but I was informed that I would get a better to this question here because it's not related to programming. I am creating a directory which uses locations to ...
12
votes
2answers
347 views

Need a spatial database that can be used by QGIS and R

I'm quite new to QGIS and I'm searching for a simple way to create a Database that allows me to use the tables in QGIS and R. I have a lot of data stored in Excel spreadsheets wich will be used for ...
12
votes
3answers
788 views

Centralizing shapefile data into database

I've got hundreds of shapefiles from various different GIS projects that I want to start consolidating into a single database platform, currently attempting this with Postgres / PostGIS. Hardly any ...
12
votes
4answers
337 views

What is a suitable Global/Universal Unique Identifier for a PostGIS database?

I have read that using OIDs as a primary key in a postgreSQL/PostGIS db is poor practice because there are instances where these can be reset. Sounds logical, but then what is a suitable alternative? ...
12
votes
1answer
226 views

How do you organize your geodata?

A geodatabase doesn't provide much flexibility in organizing your data hierarchically. All feature sets live either at the top level of the database, or one level down in feature datasets. A feature ...
12
votes
3answers
888 views

Future of spatial databases

It may be a bit off-topic. I am eager to know the industry specific importance of Spatial Databases. Is Spatial Database a very important part of any GIS system? Or will we use other technologies to ...
11
votes
5answers
795 views

Quality of free geodata compared to commercial sources

What are the sources of excellent geo-location data as possessed by Google Maps ? I am wondering that, even with large amount of volunteer work involved, why is OSM data not comparable to theirs in ...
11
votes
2answers
691 views

Mixing geometry types in one PostGIS table

I've faced with the following problem. I have to migrate from Oracle database to PostgreSQL+PostGIS. Currently all geometries of all types are stored in one table and each record contains "lid" field ...
10
votes
7answers
756 views

assign unique id to point features

The MassGIS parcel standard (http://www.mass.gov/mgis/ParstndrdVer1_5_1.pdf) utilizes a concatenation of the whole number portion of x- and y-coordinates to create a unique id (LOC_ID) for features. ...
10
votes
3answers
843 views

What is a good taxonomy or naming convention for files and folders containing GIS data?

My company has collected about 30 TBs of GIS data over the past 8 years, and I always find myself asking the following questions: What type of data do we have for a given geographic area? What are ...
10
votes
1answer
686 views

Can you query overlapping user-defined polygons at a given point in Google Maps?

I need to find out the limitation of working with the Google Maps API, and the possible solutions for doing semi-complex spatial comparisons. What I'm looking to achieve is a system of comparison ...
9
votes
5answers
976 views

What tools are available for uploading gis data to a database?

I would like a nice graphical tool that allows me to take standard gis data such as shp files and kml files and upload them to a database such as PostGIS, MySql or Oracle. Are there any such tools? ...
9
votes
5answers
371 views

Another Student in Need of Career Advice

I would like to apologize in advance for asking yet another "what should I do with my life" type of question. I am currently a senior who is very close to finishing up my B.S. in Information Systems. ...
8
votes
4answers
667 views

Fastest spatial storage format?

I am wondering what storage method will result in the fastest reading of the map vectors for rendering. SHP? PostGres? SQLite? (They do not change often and I do not need spatial functions for these ...
8
votes
5answers
223 views

Is there a climatic geo portal for every point in the world?

I'm looking for a geo portal or climate database that provides me with the daily climatic information like temperature, precipitation and humidity. Forecast data is not of my interest. I need ...
8
votes
2answers
385 views

Postgres/Postgis spatial index - no speed up

I have a spatial table in a postgres/postgis database. Every row in it represents a Polygon. It is of following form: +----+--------+ |gid | way | +----+--------+ |241 | 01030..| The geometric ...
8
votes
3answers
953 views

Beginner PostGIS question: getting geometry from multiple tables

I am very new to PostGIS, PostgreSQL, and SQL in general. I have 44 tables in my PostGIS database, and each one represents a different layer of vector data. Each was loaded from a separate shapefile, ...
8
votes
3answers
1k views

Where can I find free building height dataset for major cities around the world?

I am searching for building/property data which include building height, building area, lot size, and building type classifications(preferably as complete as possible). I am working on an Earthquake ...
8
votes
6answers
194 views

Is there a way to connect to PostgreSQL in ArcCatalog without SDE? [duplicate]

Is there a way to connect to PostgreSQL in ArcCatalog without SDE? I came across this post from 2011 that suggested using zigGIS but I can’t find a working link to the program. A little background: ...
8
votes
2answers
490 views

Find duplicate vertices in SQL Server geometry line (ArcSDE)

I have a line in a ZM polyline featureclass that has a invalid geometry. My suspicion is that the line doubles back on itself somewhere, which I've found SQL Server doesn't like. Anyone know of a ...
8
votes
2answers
556 views

Future for geospatial on App Engine?

2 years ago, this question was posted here at Gillies's blog, on date of 2009-05-15. Future for geospatial on App Engine? At that time there was no news relating to any apps of GIS web services ...
8
votes
2answers
286 views

PostGIS (2.0?) - Native Versioning of the Datastore

I recently have been surprised to see there are not too many solutions at all discussing the best methods of versioning datastores which are made available for editing. I am looking for a robust, ...
7
votes
2answers
7k views

How to insert a point into postgis?

I have created one table in my Postgis. But I can not insert point. I do not know what's wrong with my query? CREATE TABLE app ( p_id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY ); SELECT ...
7
votes
4answers
523 views

MS SQL Spatial as Central Datastore?

I've been working on opening up our spatial data from a proprietry system to one that can be read by more products (MapGuide, ESRI, gvSIG, Map3D etc....) I've decided on using SQL Spatial as we have ...
7
votes
2answers
205 views

How to create something similar to GDB in QGIS?

I used to work with ArcGIS. There I had geodatabases in which I could store several shapefiles with defined layer styles. Is there a way to do something similar with QGIS? The background is: we are ...
7
votes
3answers
1k views

how to find 20 closest points efficiently

Say I want to find 20 closest business near me. My table structure is like this: BusinessID varchar(250) utf8_unicode_ci No None Browse distinct values Change Drop ...
7
votes
2answers
2k views

QGIS supported databases?

Does anyone know if there is some kind of documentation on which database types that you can connect to in QGIS? I would also like to know if: Can I use the databes for read only or read & write. ...
7
votes
3answers
2k views

Poor Performance when using Spatial Indexes in MySQL

Re-post of a question asked on Stack Overflow when it was suggested this would be a better forum. I'm trying a little experiment at pushing a data set which is not geo-spatial but fits it quite well ...
7
votes
2answers
838 views

Intersecting a raster with a polygon using PostGIS - artefact error

I'm using PostGIS2.0 to do some raster/polygon intersections. I'm having difficulty understanding which operation I should use, and what the quickest way of performing this is. My problem is as ...
7
votes
3answers
2k views

Embedded spatial database for Java

Are there any embedded spatial databases for Java? I've come across H2 Spatial, but it was difficult to tell the status of that and if it can be used as an embedded spatial database. thanks, Jeff
7
votes
1answer
319 views

Is it possible to define a No SQL model for spatial data? [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: Is there any way I can use a Key-Value store for geospatial data? I read somewhere about No SQL being a solution for large databases management, the kind that google ...
6
votes
2answers
1k views

Spatially enabled Postgres database

I am trying to create a spatially enabled PostGIS database. I am following the PostGIS documentation, http://postgis.refractions.net/documentation/manual-1.5/ch02.html#id2648455. In the short ...
6
votes
2answers
150 views

How to decide what type of GIS to use for my study project?

I'm a student and currently taking a self directed project course. In our assignment, we were given a bunch of shapefiles and the goal is to make a tool, which would display all the data based on ...
6
votes
5answers
378 views

Comprehensive Intro to GIS Data Structures

I am looking for a comprehensive introduction to design and analysis of spatial data structures. If possible, please only link to online resources unless the offline resources is especially of note. ...

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