A software architecture for viewing/editing roads and routes

Question

I have a routing software module which uses PostGIS/pgRouting to calculate routes.

The road network is generated from an .osm file with osm2pgrouting tool.

I need to enhance the functionality of the software to meet the following requirements:

1. The user should be able to edit the roads network in a graphical editor (add/edit/delete roundabouts, lanes, road signs, highway tags, etc.);
2. The edits should be immediately updated in the geometry columns - basically, if there is a new road in the OSM map, we have a new line in the respective PostGIS column. pgRouting will use the updated roads network);
3. The user should be able to view the underlying OSM area and the edited roads network as two layers in the graphical editor.

Note:

I tend to think, that JOSM is a very convenient tool to edit roads, but it can not save_to/query a PostGIS-enabled database.

On the other side, there is QGIS, OpenJUMP and uDig, but the support for OSM editing is far less mature than in JOSM.

I thought about having a bash script which runs osm2pgrouting each time the .osm file is updated. This way I can have the .osm file edited via JOSM and the roads which are inside this .osm stored in a PostGIS-enabled database and viewed with QGIS (the most recent roads network would be accessible by QGIS).

But:

• I would have to force the user to use two graphical editors;
• and QGIS does not render OSM data in a very attractive way.

How can I meet the requirements 1, 2 and 3 in a more elegant way?

Answer 1

I'd suggest you try QGIS editing tools for editing PostGIS data. I'm quite confident, that they will meet your needs once you've tried. You can work directly on your PostGIS data without the need of changing back and forth to the .osm format.

@"QGIS doesnt render OSM data in a very attractive way": There aren't many things QGIS cannot pull off symbology-wise. It all depends on how sophisticated styles you are able/willing to write.

This is OSM styled in QGIS:

For detailed instructions and style downloads, let me refer you to my blog.