database

Window Functions and PostGIS

by

FOSS4G North America was an opportunity for me to reconnect with both community and technology. I enjoyed being able to both learn new things and refresh my skills with technologies such as PostGIS. I was reflecting on how, a couple weeks prior to the conference, I introduced the concept of PostgreSQL window functions to a … Read more

Balancing Organizational Controls and Technical Controls in Data

by

Technical Controls – The security controls (i.e., safeguards or countermeasures) for an information system that are primarily implemented and executed by the information system through mechanisms contained in the hardware, software, or firmware components of the system.

Organizational Controls – The security controls (i.e., safeguards or countermeasures) for an information system that primarily are implemented and executed by people (as opposed to systems).

NIST-800

The definitions above come from the glossary of the NIST-800 series of cybersecurity publications. While they are focused on cybersecurity, the broader concepts – automated controls versus manual controls – are applicable elsewhere. Over the last couple of weeks, and especially since I attended the TUgis conference, I have been thinking about these concepts in terms of data in general and schema in particular.

I find schema to be an interesting concept. The term “schema” is fairly wide-ranging in its definition but it can be defined as “an underlying organizational pattern or structure; conceptual framework.”

Read more

Planet PostGIS Online

by

Planet PostGIS, an aggregation of PostGIS-related blog content is now online. As the name suggests, it is built using the same technology as James Fee’s Planet Geospatial but is focused on content related to PostGIS.

If you are working with PostGIS, whether as part of an open-source stack or in conjunction with proprietary tools such as ArcGIS, you may want to check out Planet PostGIS.

Thanks to Regina Obe and everyone involved in setting this up.

Breaking Radio Silence

by

Things have been kind of quiet on the blog lately due to things being busy at work. I call that a good problem to have. Since the beginning of the year, I’ve written a a lot of proposals for a mixture of potential customers. Interestingly, I’m seeing a lot more call for “GIS Analyst” work. One trend I’ve noticed, at least in the Federal sector, is that the time between proposal due dates and award announcements seems to be lengthening. That may be an indication of the ongoing flux in funding and organizations try to figure out how to fund their requirements. It will be interesting to see how it shakes out. Of course, it’s good that the opportunities are there in the first place.

One the technical side of things, I’ve been involved in a smattering of things that’s made it hard to roll up one good post. I’m pretty heavily involved in the PIM efforts that my colleague, Barry Schimpf, has been blogging about over on the Zekiah blog.

Read more

FOSS4G North America

by

It’s rather fitting that the second plenary talk on Wednesday had to do with “firehose” applications since the FOSS4G North America (FOSS4GNA) conference was something of a firehose in itself. Despite the fact that the event was smaller than the worldwide event in Denver back in October, I came away with the same “full brain” feeling.

It feels like I never leave this place.

Of course, given the recent production release of PostGIS 2.0, that was kind of the big story for this event. I attended a number of PostGIS/PostgreSQL-related sessions and came away with lots of new information. I especially enjoyed Paul Ramsey’s “what’s new” talk on Wednesday. One thing I enjoy about his talks (here and in Denver) is that he’s not afraid to throw sample SQL up on the screen. It’s one thing to hear about a new feature but it’s another thing entirely to see a concrete example. Some may find the idea of raw SQL in a presentation abhorrent but it worked for me.

Read more

2011 TIGER Boundary Files in SpatiaLite Format

by

Over on the SpatiaLite Google Group, Stine Consulting announced the availability of 2011 TIGER Boundary files in SpatiaLite format. Despite initial enthusiasm, mainstream uptake of SpatiaLite has been slow but I think that’s about to change. Large organizations, such as the US Army, are showing a much more serious interest in SpatiaLite as they expand … Read more

Configuration Management for Geospatial Data Models

by

I wanted to take a opportunity to do something I don’t often do, and draw attention to a series of posts that’s going on over on my company’s blog. About a year ago, my company, Zekiah Technologies joined forces with Upper 90 Systems. Upper 90 was probably best known for their work building tools that supported the Spatial Data Standard for Facilities, Infrastructure, and Environment (SDSFIE), which is a data model that is used by the US DOD to standardize the representation of GIS data for the purpose of performing facilities management on military installations.

SDSFIE (PDF) has existed for some time, with several versions of the standard being rolled out to its diverse user community. Through that process, we’ve learned a thing or two about configuration management of widely-implemented geospatial data models. This understanding has been turned into a series of tools designed to help with the issues surround lifecycle management of a data model (as opposed to physical databases themselves).

Read more

Speaking of the 84%…

by

HT to Sophia Parafina for the 84%.

UPDATE: The NSIS script at utility batch file discussed here is now on github at https://github.com/geobabbler/pgstandalone. I’ll post a readme in the next day or so.

A few months ago, I asked the following question on Twitter and got this reply from Paul Ramsey:

http://twitter.com/pwramsey/status/136565522836897796

We are working with a Federal Government customer that had the interesting policy that users can install software as long as it makes no changes to the Windows registry. These users are currently running a mix of Windows 7 and XP. We are working with them to help manage one of their data models. In this case, it’s more about performing configuration management on the model/standard itself rather than physical databases with real data in them. It’s a topic we touched on over at the Zekiah blog here and an approach we have used successfully for years to manage the SDSFIE data standard.

Read more

PgMap Is Now SpatialKit

by

I blogged a while back on PgMap, a freeware ArcGIS extension for directly connecting to PostGIS. ST-Links, the makers of PgMap, sent out an e-mail this morning announcing that PgMap and QMap (the equivalent technology for interacting with SQL Server 2008 spatial data) have been combined into a single tool called SpatialKit. This move comes … Read more

SpatiaLite 3.0 Beta Is Available

by

Alessandro Furieri announced the availability of the beta of SpatiaLite 3.0.0 on 17 August. It can be downloaded here: http://www.gaia-gis.it/spatialite-3.0.0-BETA/index.html. Some of the more interesting additions include additional support for topology and the ability to export GeoJSON. I did a very quick test with QGIS 1.7.0 and was able to directly access and edit a … Read more