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)

Configuring GeoServer web services


Before we move on to writing our WebGIS code, we need to configure a service so we can expose spatial data for a web client to consume.

Our examples are based on GeoServer as it is considered a reference implementation of OGC web standards. Apart from that, GeoServer provides a rather intuitive administration GUI to simplify many server maintenance tasks.

If you happen to not have GeoServer installed, please get it up and running first - you can download the software from here: http://geoserver.org/release/stable/. GeoServer documentation may be obtained from here: http://docs.geoserver.org/.

Installation is rather straightforward and we suggest for the sake of simplicity you use the installation pack wrapped with the Jetty container.

While data service configuration is specific to GeoServer, you can use any alternative GeoServer of your choice, for example, MapServer (http://www.mapserver.org/). If you decide to not use GeoServer and go for an alternative...