It’s been almost two weeks since I returned from FOSS4G 2017 in Boston, Massachusetts (USA), and I wanted to take a little time to regroup and get caught up before settling down to write about it. It was a busy week, highlighted for me and the Spatial Networks team by the first-ever Fulcrum Live event….
Thoughts on the Geospatial Data Act of 2017
Before delving into this topic, a big disclaimer is important: I am not a lawyer or a lobbyist or any sort of professional policy expert. The following analysis is based on 25 years experience providing geospatial consulting services to the federal government. You should read the full text of the bill yourself and draw your…
Refreshing a PostGIS Materialized View in FME
I am following up my previous post with an extremely simple example using FME to kick off the refresh of a materialized view (matview) after a data import. I had never used FME prior to coming to Spatial Networks, but now I’m hooked. I’m having a really hard time finding things it can’t do. As…
Working with Materialized Views in PostGIS
It’s been a few months since I’ve posted, owing mainly to getting my feet under me at Spatial Networks. About a month after I started, the company re-merged with Fulcrum, which had previously been spun off as a separate company. As a result, I’ve gotten to know the Fulcrum engineering team and have gotten to…
TUGIS 2017
Yesterday, I attended TUGIS 2017, which was the 30th installment of Maryland’s annual statewide GIS conference. It was a great experience as there is a lot of innovative work going on in Maryland. The one-day format is specifically designed to be a high-value experience. Attendees trade the minimal impact on schedule for the fact that…
Triggered Notifications Using PostGIS, Redux
A while back, I wrote a post about using Python to generate triggered notifications in PostGIS. The approach described in that post is somewhat fraught with peril and I’ve learned a little bit more since then, so I have a different approach, using PostgreSQL NOTIFY and LISTEN, which I’ll describe here.
Engagement
A few years ago, we sold our house and moved into a new one that we had built. The old house happened to be the one in which I had grown up. The process of disconnecting from that house got me back in touch with a lot of tasks that had become muscle memory. For…
Making a Change
Most of my January has been a process that culminated in today’s announcement that I will be moving on from Zekiah and joining the team at Spatial Networks, where I will be taking on the role of Vice President of Engineering and Technology. https://twitter.com/tonyquartararo/status/823870924478906368 I’ve been at Zekiah for fifteen years and have had the…
HIFLD Open January 2017 Updates
I just got an announcement in my inbox of a major update to HIFLD Open. A number of new data sets have been added, along with updates to many others. The announcement also addressed HIFLD Secure, but I won’t touch upon that here. From the flyer attached to the email, here are the updates. If…
Thank You for 10 Years
My last few posts have been bit…shall we say…retrospective, so I won’t dwell there too much this time. The beginning of this month saw the ten-year anniversary of my first post on this blog. A lot has changed during that time in the geospatial industry. I am fascinated by the tools, concepts, and issues that…