Playing with pg_featureserv

Dec 21, 2023 | postgis, QGIS

Which is really all this post is about – learning something new. This year I hit a lot of Conferences and a talking point I’ve done for the last few years has been the tn 911 project. So during the talk I always had this graphic up:

QGIS makes the edits. PostGIS holds the data. Geoserver pushes out some imagery and services. The big problem was due to security at the 911 center geoserver wasn’t really pushing out data to share. We could – but then you have holes in the firewall and that just made me tired. I ended up falling back to Cloud Optimized Geotiffs to share out DEMs and imagery at some point to everyone in the 911. I also created a new problem by forgetting I had done this. The client was gleefully using them and somehow it slipped out of my brain.

After FOSS4GNA, I started thinking that the whole concept of the 911 database needed an update. I had COGS. I’ve been debating a openlayers map on the backend to just show the data. So I started looking at pg_featureserv and pg_tileserv. So now, I can get data straight from the database to whatever else that can consume a geojson. It would be insanely nice if the dispatch software could ingest geojson.

Anyway – nothing else much to say except I was able to trudge through docker and get this running. I’ve been playing with passing queries through CQL and maybe today I’ll execute a function through pg_featureserv.

It can be a nice addition to the Tennessee 911 project. It’s also a bit different in terms of the way I’m used to thinking about data. My life up until 2014 was very file centric. Then I started learning more about databases. Then all those OGC services. Now it’s “just do it”. Which really between this and COGS (I can’t believe I forgot I had implemented that) makes the project less of a “infrastructure pain” on my end.

Anyway – New things. Never stop learning.

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