Questions tagged [spatial-database]

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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Are there newer routing algorithms (than Dijkstra, A*) in GIS databases?

There are works like Reach for A* from Microsoft researchers and Highway Hierarchies by Sanders and Schtolz (if I spell the name correctly) from Karlsruhe Uni. Both of them reduce the calculations ...
culebrón's user avatar
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37 votes
2 answers
3k views

Choosing coordinate system 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 ...
SO Stinks's user avatar
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33 votes
5 answers
5k views

Does ArcGIS for Desktop support SpatiaLite?

SpatiaLite is playing an increasing role in my organization. As it stood in 2012, using SpatiaLite alongside ArcGIS Desktop required an amount of importing and exporting of data that was not always ...
Roger D.'s user avatar
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32 votes
4 answers
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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 ...
mapoholic's user avatar
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31 votes
3 answers
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Poor performance with storing large rasters in PostGIS and visualising in QGIS

my question concerns the use and performance of several software tools in conjunction, namely PostgreSQL, PostGIS, QGIS, and GDAL. I'm a long-time ArcGIS, Python, and R user who is interested in ...
bcaradima's user avatar
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29 votes
3 answers
6k views

Organization and tidiness of multiple copies of layers? [closed]

Back in the days when I was in the university I had a "Organization and tidiness" problem – I was unorganized and kept my layers in different folders without distinct names and hence had multiple ...
jonatr's user avatar
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28 votes
3 answers
12k views

What is difference between ArcSDE and spatially enabled databases?

When would you want to use ArcSDE (available as ArcGIS Server Basic license level) versus a spatially enabled database? What are the trade-offs on either side? What are the benefits on either side?...
TheSteve0's user avatar
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27 votes
2 answers
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Mixing geometry types in one PostGIS table

I'm 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 a "lid" field ...
drnextgis's user avatar
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24 votes
3 answers
11k 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 ...
Pablo's user avatar
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23 votes
7 answers
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GIS Software Choice for a small university research centre [closed]

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, ...
Alan Owen's user avatar
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23 votes
2 answers
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Which geodatabase type is most appropriate for both open source and ESRI use?

Main Question: Is there a geodatabase type that seamlessly works with both ESRI and open source products? Details: My company currently passes around geodata in various vector and raster file ...
Ethan H's user avatar
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22 votes
4 answers
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How to export shapefile to SpatiaLite

I have a shapefile with one layer. I can open it with QGIS. Now I want to convert this shapefile or layer to Spatialite database. How can I do it? Is it possible to do with QGIS?
Shahjalal's user avatar
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22 votes
3 answers
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(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 ...
Mawg says reinstate Monica's user avatar
21 votes
9 answers
35k views

Choosing database for storing spatial data?

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 ...
Nathan W's user avatar
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21 votes
3 answers
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What are the differences between spatial databases? [closed]

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 ...
TheSteve0's user avatar
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21 votes
1 answer
7k views

Advantages of R-trees in comparison to geohashes

Geohashes are being widely used in products like: Lucene, mongodb, etc and have become one of the most important technology of present day. Have Geohashes replaced the good old R-trees or do R-trees ...
Jannat Arora's user avatar
17 votes
6 answers
3k 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.
17 votes
2 answers
892 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 ...
Michael Markieta's user avatar
16 votes
5 answers
3k views

Is good database design less important for spatial databases?

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 ...
Nicklas Avén's user avatar
16 votes
2 answers
11k views

PostgreSQL/PostGIS spatial index - no speed up

I have a spatial table in a PostgreSQL/PostGIS database. Every row in it represents a Polygon. It is of following form: +----+--------+ |gid | way | +----+--------+ |241 | 01030..| The geometric ...
MichiMichbeck's user avatar
16 votes
2 answers
2k 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 ...
Dspanes's user avatar
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16 votes
3 answers
10k 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 ...
djq's user avatar
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15 votes
1 answer
976 views

Standard for storing human metadata in spatial databases

Is there an existing, standard, universal approach (and hopefully existing tools that support managing it) for storing geospatial metadata in non-ESRI spatial databases alongside (and therefore able ...
JohnZastrow's user avatar
14 votes
5 answers
2k 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 ...
Abhishek Mishra's user avatar
13 votes
5 answers
635 views

What in-depth spatial database systems tutorials exist? [closed]

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 ...
AKR1989's user avatar
  • 141
13 votes
3 answers
1k 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 ...
colemanm's user avatar
  • 1,347
13 votes
4 answers
4k views

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

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 ...
Sipp's user avatar
  • 341
13 votes
1 answer
413 views

Is the ST_ prefix appropriate for functions not included in SQL/MM Part 3?

I was reading a thread on the geospatial extension for Presto in this Github issue, where a function, line_locate_point, was introduced. It was based off PostGIS's ST_LineLocatePoint function, which ...
Brideau's user avatar
  • 550
12 votes
2 answers
10k views

Spatially enabled Postgres database

I am trying to create a spatially enabled PostGIS database. I am following the PostGIS documentation, http://postgis.net/docs/manual-1.5/ch02.html#id2648455. In the short version, i executed, ...
Sam007's user avatar
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12 votes
4 answers
2k 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? ...
Ando's user avatar
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12 votes
3 answers
27k views

Exporting multiple featureclasses to shapefiles using ArcGIS Desktop?

I have many feature classes in a geodatabase and I need to save/export them into shapefiles. Any Ideas? Click on every single layer -> export is not a good option, due to the number of feature ...
Nino Poon's user avatar
  • 235
12 votes
4 answers
4k views

Inserting points into SQL Server using pymssql?

I am collecting X and Y values from a web service (Twitter) via a python script. In the long run, this will run over a period of months and I intend on stopping at around the 6 million point mark. ...
jakc's user avatar
  • 9,850
12 votes
3 answers
3k 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 ...
12 votes
1 answer
1k 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 ...
Llaves's user avatar
  • 5,871
12 votes
4 answers
7k 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.
Jeff Storey's user avatar
  • 1,057
11 votes
2 answers
2k 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 using ...
b_dev's user avatar
  • 826
10 votes
7 answers
3k 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. ...
cwb's user avatar
  • 639
10 votes
3 answers
5k 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 ...
user avatar
10 votes
2 answers
1k views

Basics about Spatial Indexes

I was asking on a forum if it could be a good idea to create spatial indexes on subsets of a table when your application display on map only those subsets and never the entire table. I was asking ...
Below the Radar's user avatar
10 votes
2 answers
37k views

How to convert 6 & 7 digit coordinates to degrees latitude & longitude

I'm a bit new to the whole GIS world, and though I am making great headway drawing polygons and such in Bing Maps, I am currently stuck. In our SQL spatial data, I came across MULTIPOLYGON data, where ...
Jonathan Hansen's user avatar
10 votes
1 answer
4k views

How to create linestrings with a definite angle and length, that are fixed to a point

I want to create linestrings with a definite angle (e.g. 160°) and length (e.g. 2m) that are fixed to a number of points of another linestring. So, I want to use the ST_DumpPoints function to find the ...
Stefan's user avatar
  • 4,344
10 votes
1 answer
3k views

Seeking tools for uploading GIS data to database

I would like a nice graphical tool that allows me to take standard GIS data such as shapefiles and KML files and upload them to a database such as PostGIS, MySQL or Oracle. Are there any such tools?
10 votes
2 answers
1k 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 ...
Chad Cooper's user avatar
  • 12.7k
10 votes
3 answers
615 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, ...
NetConstructor.com's user avatar
10 votes
1 answer
2k 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 ...
Ryan Charmley's user avatar
10 votes
0 answers
3k 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: ...
user17963's user avatar
  • 101
9 votes
1 answer
12k views

How to create a table from existing tables (applying new schemas) in postgis DB?

I have a table that is geospatially enabled; that contain world borders. I want to break it down to different schemas (global, europe etc..) . My thought is to use use something that looks like this: ...
nickves's user avatar
  • 11.4k
9 votes
4 answers
688 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 ...
Jamo's user avatar
  • 1,457
9 votes
1 answer
5k views

Setting geometry types importing to PostGIS with OGR

I'm using ogr2ogr to import data into a PostGIS database. Each dataset I need to import has (theoretically) the same exact data structure, but it appears that they are not the same geometry types. ...
colemanm's user avatar
  • 1,347
9 votes
5 answers
527 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. ...
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