News
February 4, 2010
The 1.5.0 release of PostGIS is now available. This is a major release adding a significant number of new features including:
- New "geography" type for managing geodetic (lat/lon) data
- Performance-enhanced distance calculations
- GML and KML format readers
- Improved shape loading GUI
- And more!
December 17, 2009
The 1.4.1 release of PostGIS is now available. This is a minor release addressing a few issues that have been filed since the 1.4.0 release.
- Bug fixes for ST_LineCrossingDirection, ST_Union, ST_MakeLine
- Improved parsing for higher dimensional geometries
- Addressed memory issues with ST_As* functions
- Corrected inconsistent results when using the ~= operator
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 has been developed by Refractions Research as a project in open source spatial database technology.
PostGIS is released under the GNU General Public License. We continue to develop PostGIS, and have added user interface tools, basic topology support, data validation, coordinate transformation, programming APIs and much more.
Our list of future projects includes full topology support, raster support, networks and routing, three dimensional surfaces,
curves and splines and other features. Ask us about consulting services and implementing new features.
Case Studies
Learn how PostGIS is being used around the world.
GlobeXplorer serves terrabytes of imagery to clients around the world using PostGIS as their production database server. In 2004, GlobeXplorer migrated from Informix to PostGIS, and now they are serving over a million requests a day with PostGIS.
UC Davis Soil Resource Laboratory
The US Davis Soil Resource Laboratory publishes soil inventory data for the southwest United States using PostGIS and Mapserver. Six months ago they were using shape files for spatial data storage. With PostGIS, their data is integrated in the database and new avenues of display and analysis have been opened for them.
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.