Book Image

Mastering PostGIS

By : Dominik Mikiewicz, Michal Mackiewicz , Tomasz Nycz
Book Image

Mastering PostGIS

By: Dominik Mikiewicz, Michal Mackiewicz , Tomasz Nycz

Overview of this book

PostGIS is open source extension onf PostgreSQL object-relational database system that allows GIS objects to be stored and allows querying for information and location services. The aim of this book is to help you master the functionalities offered by PostGIS- from data creation, analysis and output, to ETL and live edits. The book begins with an overview of the key concepts related to spatial database systems and how it applies to Spatial RMDS. You will learn to load different formats into your Postgres instance, investigate the spatial nature of your raster data, and finally export it using built-in functionalities or 3th party tools for backup or representational purposes. Through the course of this book, you will be presented with many examples on how to interact with the database using JavaScript and Node.js. Sample web-based applications interacting with backend PostGIS will also be presented throughout the book, so you can get comfortable with the modern ways of consuming and modifying your spatial data.
Table of Contents (9 chapters)

Reprojecting geometries


Reprojecting, also called transformation, is a process of converting a geometry's coordinates from one coordinate system to another. Since PostGIS spatial analysis functions can't operate on geometries with different coordinate systems, it's a very important functionality. It's provided by the ST_Transform function.

ST_Transform accepts two arguments: the input geometry and the target SRID. For example, to transform the coordinates of a point feature (city center) to latitude-longitude, we write the following:

SELECT ST_AsText(ST_Transform(wkb_geometry,4326)) FROM points WHERE osm_id = '253525668'; 

st_astext 
POINT(18.5419933 50.0955793) 

While ST_Transform can be used on the fly, it's computationally expensive and can cause a complex query to run very slowly. If it's necessary to run a spatial analysis using tables with different SRIDs, it's will be wise to create a materialized view with geometries reprojected beforehand:

CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW boundaries_3857 AS...