We are a small group of GIS users with different expertises embedded in an administrative infrastructure attempting to switch to a small and low cost open source infrastructure (open source GDI). Currently we’re using ArcGis 10.1 and 10.2 for producing thematic maps for schools. The aim is to use QGIS for future work. To become independent from location as well as from the administrative data infrastructure we are looking for solutions to store our data. The data should be managed central and accessible for anyone in our group from home. Until now we thought about an ftp server or a cloud solution. One key point is how to deal with simultaneous data access. For QGIS, are there any database server plugins that don’t require advanced database managing experiences? We are interested in any experiences how to manage this switchover and especially which software is practical.
3
-
How much data? How many simultaneous users? The obvious solution is a web accessible PostGIS server. QGIS can transparently access data on PostGIS (no special plugins needed). But that will require some database management.– MichaCommented May 19, 2014 at 13:29
-
Honestly we don't have much data basicly some shapefiles and a lot of redundant data (50 GB) so we also have to clean up our stock parallel to this switch. 2 to max. 5 persons can have access to the data at the same time. I'm not shure if a PostGIS server is a little bit oversized?– parallaxCommented May 19, 2014 at 13:58
-
With so few users, you might get by with a Spatialite database on a network shared drive. You may experience some slowdowns if 5 users access the same tables concurrently. And there's NO user-access limitations in Spatialite, so NO protection against one accidentally changing someone else's work. But, having said that, managing a Spatialite database is a no-brainer. It's a single file, no installation, just import the shapefiles, and you're ready to go. And you get almost all the spatial database analysis functions like in PostGIS.– MichaCommented May 20, 2014 at 8:27
Add a comment
|
1 Answer
I did this at a university, and we used a PostGIS database to store all our vector datasets. Additionally, we had vector footprints for all raster data, which we could load directly into QGIS via an Action. The rasters were stored in a cloud webservice. Initially we used Dropbox, which worked, but it was not optimal. Like @Micha stated, the size and amount of data will be critical to the setup and configuration. But at the very least, QGIS, PostGIS, and webstorage for large datasets.
answered May 19, 2014 at 13:51
