You knew this was coming….which I should have put this in the SQL post but I really felt like it needed it’s own short article.
I was introduced to PostGIS about 6 years ago. It took me about a year to wrap my head around it. When I started using it my first inclination was “Well this isn’t much different than SDE” except I had never used SDE for anything more than data storage. Suddenly I could use SQL and muck around in the data and do things.
I enjoy postgis – I still suck at it. I sit and struggle with the simpler things (In my opinion) but it’s the most satisfying tool I use daily.
If you went back to my second day of XYMas where I said ‘Learn GDAL’ and I’m going to somewhat contradict myself and go ‘Learn Postgis’ and at the very least learn Spatial SQL. Earlier I was talking to someone who was just starting out her career in conservation and her question was “I want to learn more about GIS so what do I need to do?”. She has a wide array of tools at her command from the current offerings from ESRI to QGIS. My response was “Let’s load all your data into PostGIS/PostgreSQL and you start working with it” (that’s the one tool we don’t have loaded). Which then lead to more of a discussion on why I thought this was important. I know what will happen:
- She will be slow to get started
- There will be one day where she’s alone in the office and the tech bug will hit and she will start working her way into PostGIS
- Suddenly you realize you’ve got a whole new world of ways to look at your data.
Anyway – yeah I know I’ve not dove into anything practical – but I actually have no idea how to do anything practical in the short space these articles take up. All I can say is learn:
- Find tutorials on the internet
- Buy a book
- Videos for the win!
