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.
Town of Orchard Park, New York
The town of Orchard Park, New York manages their GASB accounting inventory in PostgreSQL and provides access to multiple departments and the public via Mapserver on PostGIS.
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.
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.