News
Sep, 2018
Oct 1, 2017
What is PostGIS?
PostGIS adds support for geographic objects to the PostgreSQL object-relational database. In effect, PostGIS "spatially enables" the PostgreSQL server, allowing it to be used as a backend spatial database for geographic information systems (GIS), much like ESRI's SDE or Oracle's Spatial extension. PostGIS follows the OpenGIS "Simple Features Specification for SQL" and has been certified as compliant with the "Types and Functions" profile.
PostGIS development was started by Refractions Research as a project in open source spatial database technology.
PostGIS is released under the GNU General Public License. PostGIS continues to be developed by a group of contributors led by a Project Steering Committee and new features continue to be added.
Case Studies
Learn how PostGIS is being used around the world.
Sistema de Información Territorial Estatal en Línea, México
SITEL, a project hosting a spatial data infrastructure, allows various government agencies to share data to be included in their own projects as health, security, urban furniture or mobility. Today, they've integrated over 1,910 vectorial layers plus another 70+ raster files, provided through PostGIS and WMS/WFS/WCS services with Mapserver.
North Dakota State Water Commission
The North Dakota State Water Commission manages all their hydrological and spatial data inside PostgreSQL and PostGIS. Five years ago, they were using only proprietary software, now they are using mostly open source.
Institut Géographique National, France
The national mapping agency of France manages over 100 million topographic features in PostGIS/PostgreSQL and provides read/write access to over 100 field researchers around the country.