PostGIS raster support

Question

I have the following requirements to manage raster data

1) Convert raster-maps from BSB format to PNG or GeoTIFF
2) Cut the borders of the map
3) Merge individual maps to form a contiguous coverage map
4) Tile them for caching and loading
5) Serve them up on a WMS service to clients.

I am using OpenLayers->GeoServer->PostGIS stack to manage all my vector data. I have been thinking of loading, storing & retrieve raster data the same way (in PostGIS).

So my questions are

1) What is the benefit of storing rasters in DB over doing this in the file system?
2) What are the steps to achieve this and what tools/ commands I would use?
3) Would I leverage the DB cache or would I still need a tile-cache ?
4) What are the bugs/ gotchas in PostGIS raster handling that I need to watch out for?

Thanks,
Ramesh

Answer 1

I don't think PostGIS will gain you much for your stated requirements. The value in PostGIS for raster is that you can do PostGIS processing (using the Raster functions that are provided). If you don't need that processing, then it will probably be easier to just use GeoServer to serve up your maps.