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PostGIS

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Encyclopedia of GIS

Synonyms

Postgres; OGIS; Spatial DBMS; Public-domain software; Open source; Object-relational; Simple features model; GEOS library; SQL, spatial; R-tree; GiST index

Definition

PostGIS is a spatial database extension for the PostgreSQL (SQL being structured query language) object‐relational database. It is certified as a compliant “Simple Features for SQL” database by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC).

Figure 1
figure 1

Geometry class hierarchy of the “Simple Features for SQL” specification from the Open Geospatial Consortium. The geometry types supported by PostGIS are gray shaded

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Recommended Reading

  1. Free Software Foundation (1991) GNU General Public License. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html. Accessed 1 Jan 2007

  2. GEOS (2006) Geometry Engine Open Source. http://geos.refractions.net. Accessed 1 Jan 2007

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  4. Refractions Research (2007) PostGIS. http://postgis.refractions.net/. Accessed 1 Jan 2007

  5. University of California (Berkeley) (1999) The BSD License. http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php. Accessed 1 Jan 2007

  6. PostgreSQL Global Development Group (2007) PostgrSQL. http://www.postgresql.org/. Accessed 1 Jan 2007

  7. Shekhar, S., Chawla, S.: Spatial Databases: A Tour. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ (2003)

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  9. OGC (ed.): OpenGIS Simple Features Specification for SQL (Revision 1.1). OGC (1999)

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  10. ISO/TC211: ISO 19107 Geographic Information—Spatial Schema. ISO (2003)

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  13. Sigaev, T., Bartunov, O. (2006) GiST for PostgreSQL. http://www.sai.msu.su/~megera/postgres/gist. Accessed 1 Jan 2007

  14. Hellerstein, J.M., Naughton, J.F., Pfeffer, A.: Generalized search trees for database systems. In: Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Very Large Data Bases, Zürich, Switzerland, 11–15 Sept 1995

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  15. Guttman, A.: R-trees: a dynamic index structure for spatial searching. In: Proceedings of ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data Boston, MA, 18–21 June 1984

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  16. Nebert, D.D. (2004) Developing Spatial Data Infrastructures: The SDI Cookbook, Version 2.0. http://www.gsdi.org/pubs/cookbook/cookbookV2.0.pdf. Accessed 12 Oct 2005

  17. ISO/IEC: ISO/IEC 13249-3: Information Technology—Database Languages—SQL Multimedia and Application Packages. Part 3: Spatial (2006)

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD), German Aerospace Center (DLR), Weßling, Germany

    Christian Strobl

Authors
  1. Christian Strobl
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA

    Shashi Shekhar (McKnight Distinguished University Professor) (McKnight Distinguished University Professor)

  2. Management Science and Information Systems Department, Rutgers Business School Newark and New Brunswick Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, Newark, NJ, 07102, USA

    Hui Xiong (Assistant Professor) (Assistant Professor)

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© 2008 Springer-Verlag

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Strobl, C. (2008). PostGIS. In: Shekhar, S., Xiong, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of GIS. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-35973-1_1012

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