postgis

CartoDB + Leaflet = Easy

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One of the biggest sources of buzz at FOSS4G was CartoDB. It is a hosted solution from Vizzuality that uses PostGIS to allow you to store your spatial data online. I got a beta account a couple of weeks ago but life (i.e. paying work) kept getting in the way but I finally got to play with it recently.

One of the things that intrigued me is that, similar to Google Fusion Tables, CartoDB exposes a SQL interface through a RESTful API (I’m still not sure if the term “API” applies to REST but it’s a convenient shorthand). Essentially, CartoDB exposes PostgreSQL SQL and the spatial SQL extensions of PostGIS. Once your data is loaded, you can query it and return the results as either CartoDB’s JSON syntax, KML or GeoJSON.

With this information, I set out to build a simple application to query property data and display the results on a map in a browser. In addition to CartoDB, I elected to use the Leaflet Javascript library to accomplish the mapping (although I also experimented with OpenLayers). Displaying and styling GeoJSON in Leaflet is very straightforward and this task gave me and excuse to get a little more comfortable with it.

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FOSS4G Quick Hits

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I had the distinct pleasure of attending my first FOSS4G conference in Denver last week. Having not attended one previously, I can only rely on the opinions of others that this has been the best FOSS4G yet. For me, this was best geospatial conference I have attended. I’ll probably blog in more detail about some of the things I saw but here are my high-level observations:

It's time to refresh your thinking about open-source geospatial tools.

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Taking A Look At PgMap

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When I blogged about the official end of zigGIS last week, I included a mention of PgMap, a free extension to ArcMap for direct read/edit of PostGIS data. Judging from outbound links, there seems to be a good bit of interest in it so I decided to take a look.

To recap, Abe decided to pull the plug on zigGIS due to the fact that ESRI will support direct read/edit of spatial databases (as simple features) in 10.1. In my opinion, this is a good development. With native support coming, there was no need to continue with zigGIS. That support, however, will only exist in ArcGIS 10.1. Users of older versions will need to find alternatives. Based on our experience with zigGIS (as well as download data I’ve seen for the WeoGeo toolbar), there are a lot of people (especially outside the US) still using ArcGIS 9.x so demand for an alternative will probably be high for some time.

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Triggered Notifications Using PostGIS

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My project work the last few months has kept me away from a lot of my favorite open-source tools and I was starting to get hives. Specifically, it had been a while since I had worked with PostgreSQL and PostGIS and I was missing the experience, so I dreamed up something to do.

I do a lot of work implementing situational awareness systems for my customers and one common requirement is automated notification of events. I decided that I wanted to roll a completely FOSS approach to sending an SMS notification based upon the results of a spatial query. This post will discuss the basic wiring to make it all work. I’ll probably add more advanced features in subsequent posts but I’ll be sticking to the basics for now.

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Me and zigGIS

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If you’ve been to the Obtuse Software site recently, you may or may not have noticed a change to the “Who We Are” page. It now lists only Abe Gillespie and Paolo Corti. Prior to my trip to Colorado to talk about zigGIS at GIS in the Rockies, I informed Abe and Paolo that I would be stepping back from any “official” involvement in Obtuse.

This does not mean that I am stepping back from involvement in zigGIS. I plan to continue to support zigGIS as it returns to open-source but, in truth, I haven’t done much with zigGIS day-to-day in a long time. As part of the return of zigGIS to open-source at version 3.0, Abe has been working on a plan to give the community multiple paths to support the project, including sponsorship and technical support plans. I’m sure he’ll have the details out soon so I’ll leave it at that (since it’s not my story to tell). So, as Obtuse transitions to more of a supporting role for the zigGIS 3.0 open-source project, I felt that this was a good time to step away and become part of the community.

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Gearing up for GIS in the Rockies

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I finally got around to finishing my travel plans for GIS in the Rockies (personal obligations prevent me from making it out for Ingite Spatial NoCo). I booked my flight a while ago but I had been procrastinating on the hotel and rental car. This will be my first time in that part of Colorado so I am looking forward to seeing the area and meeting people out there. NoCo is second only to the DC area in clustering of folks in my Twitter crowd.

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zigGIS 3.0 To Be Open-Source

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Update: zigGIS has been discontinued. Abe officially announced today that the next major release of zigGIS, version 3.0, will return to open-source. This announcement was followed up with a message on the zigGIS Google Group. A snippet of that message is here: We have some exciting news. The next version of zigGIS will officially return … Read more