RDMBS and Spatial Data on OS X

Shady — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 15:07:00 -0800

MySQL is nice enough for your average web application. Even larger applications can be run on it with the appropriate amount of tuning voodoo (see: wikipedia). There is even the MySQL MaxDB product (essentially SAPDB rebranded after its GPL release) available for Enterprise level MySQL, although this is not available for OS X.

Core data is also a nice solution for persistence inside a single application.

Oracle can also be run on OS X, provided you enjoy being turned upside down and shaken over a large funnel until all your money comes out. Not that this pertains specifically to Oracle on OS X, it's really more of an Oracle feature in general.

Each of these database server options are available for OS X. And they all have their various uses and proponents. So why am I here talking about Postgres? Well,

It's Free (speech, and beer).
It's enterprise ready (I seem to recall the .org primary name servers run on postgres)
PostGIS

For those who don't know, PostGIS is an addon for PostgreSQL that allows the use of geographic objects as native datatypes inside the SQL engine. This includes points, lines, polygons, as well as a variety of functions that can work with these data types to give us, say, area, intersection, and unions of the various objects. To use the industry parlance, PostGIS will "spatially enable" PostgreSQL which allows us to store a wide variety of geographic data. We can additionally point tools such as Quantum GIS, GRASS GIS, and even the various ARC tools at a PostgreSQL database for almost all of our spatial data storage needs. It is based on the Open Geospatial Consortium Simple Features Specification for SQL.

Storing spatial data in an RDMBS solves a wide variety of problems that happen when managing spatial data, especially with multiple users. We can manage concurrent access more easily, we have defined mechanisms for backing up the data, and we can even generate other file types (shapefiles, for example) from the data in the database. Any organiziation that has more then a few users working on large amounts of spatial data can benefit a lot through the use of a spatially enabled RDMBS

So why PostgreSQL then? Well, to my knowledge there is no equivalent library for MySQL (feel free to point my in the right direction if one does exist). Ditto for MaxDB. Oracle does have spatial extensions, but costs, to use a technical term, assloads of money. DB2 and MSSQL 2000 also have their own spatial extension, but fall into largley the same category as Oracle with regards to price. Although, there is a free spatial extension for MSSQL 2000 available, the price of the server itself is costly. Oh yeah, and neither one of those two run on OS X. PostgreSQL does.

Over the course of the week, I wil be writing more about setting up PostgreSQL on OS X (it's really not that hard), installing PostGIS, and getting everything working nice and happily. Time permitting, I will even experiment with the BaseTen framework. This library gives us all the ease of a CoreData-like API, with a PostegreSQL back end. Heck, with those two, we're halfway to a Cocoa Native GIS program. Wouldn't that be cool?

Stay tuned tomorrow, when I delve into the mysteries of PostgreSQL, OS X, and kern.sysv.shmmax.

"RDMBS and Spatial Data on OS X" by Test

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 16:52:59 -0800

Test

Shady Project: RDMBS and Spatial Data on OS X

RDMBS and Spatial Data on OS X

"RDMBS and Spatial Data on OS X" by Test