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Postgis Cookbook
An easy-to-use guide, full of hands-on recipes for manipulating spatial data in a PostGIS database. Each topic is explained and placed in context, and for the more inquisitive, there are more details of the concepts used. If you are a web developer or a software architect, especially in location-based companies, and want to expand the range of techniques you are using with PostGIS, then this book is for you. You should have some prior experience with PostgreSQL database and spatial concepts.
484 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 24, 2014
I started reading the PostGIS Cookbook with high expectations. Nonetheless, I was positively surprised by the quality of the book, especially regarding its reread value. Skimming through the book once will give you a good idea of what PostGIS is capable of, and it inspired me to move some important parts of automated postprocessing workflows into the database. Keeping the book around will help you put together projects more quickly and efficiently.
The book is composed of several recipes, all of which are fairly concise. You should have a bit of background working with geodata and be fairly comfortable with reading SQL in order to get the most out of it, because theoretical explanations are kept to a minimum. This is great for users at or above the intermediate level, because it's a perfect format for quickly looking up practical examples of how certain things are done without having to dig a lot. If you're looking to move from beginner to intermediate user, the examples also will help you a lot.
The chapters cover a broad variety of topics, from importing and exporting data to simple raster and vector analyses. Math algebra, terrain analyses, routing and photogrammetry are covered well, as well as serving the data locally or over a web connection and displaying it in a desktop GIS or a self-made web client. There are also some nice examples and explanations of how to administer, maintain and optimize the database itself, as well as analyzing and optimizing the performance of single queries using Postgres' built in profiler. It's helpful for the more advanced topics if you bring some prior knowledge with, but if you're just getting started in these areas the book contains good tips on where you can find further information. The focus is on practicability and presenting examples that are easy to understand, duplicate, and adapt to your own needs.
The only thing that I wish were done better is the code formating. I read the ebook version and in some chapters code blocks were missing line breaks. In the SQL this makes it hard to read, especially because no space was substituted for line breaks, which broke the syntax, but for the Python examples this was even worse because the indentation is semantically significant.
Aside from the formating problem, I was extremely pleased with the PostGIS Cookbook and will surely use it in the future often while migrating analysis steps and data storage into a Postgres/PostGIS database.
The book is composed of several recipes, all of which are fairly concise. You should have a bit of background working with geodata and be fairly comfortable with reading SQL in order to get the most out of it, because theoretical explanations are kept to a minimum. This is great for users at or above the intermediate level, because it's a perfect format for quickly looking up practical examples of how certain things are done without having to dig a lot. If you're looking to move from beginner to intermediate user, the examples also will help you a lot.
The chapters cover a broad variety of topics, from importing and exporting data to simple raster and vector analyses. Math algebra, terrain analyses, routing and photogrammetry are covered well, as well as serving the data locally or over a web connection and displaying it in a desktop GIS or a self-made web client. There are also some nice examples and explanations of how to administer, maintain and optimize the database itself, as well as analyzing and optimizing the performance of single queries using Postgres' built in profiler. It's helpful for the more advanced topics if you bring some prior knowledge with, but if you're just getting started in these areas the book contains good tips on where you can find further information. The focus is on practicability and presenting examples that are easy to understand, duplicate, and adapt to your own needs.
The only thing that I wish were done better is the code formating. I read the ebook version and in some chapters code blocks were missing line breaks. In the SQL this makes it hard to read, especially because no space was substituted for line breaks, which broke the syntax, but for the Python examples this was even worse because the indentation is semantically significant.
Aside from the formating problem, I was extremely pleased with the PostGIS Cookbook and will surely use it in the future often while migrating analysis steps and data storage into a Postgres/PostGIS database.
April 3, 2014
Full of detailed code examples and guides for solving common geospatial problems in PostGIS. This is a great source of inspiration for exploring a wide variety of functions and techniques which are possible in PostGIS. This book isn't aimed at beginners - it's targeted to readers who are familiar with GIS software and have some experience in using PostGIS. Highly recommended for anyone wanting to take their PostGIS skills to the next level.
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