[portland] Meeting TOMORROW 6:30pm: Geographic Information in Python

[Rich Shepard]

On Mon, 11 Jan 2010, jason kirtland wrote:

> The theme for January is: Geographic Information.

   Ah, too bad I cannot make it.

> Webb Sprauge will talk about how to incorporate geographic data into
> relational databases using PostGIS and PostgreSQL. He will cover making a
> connection with psycopg2, modeling using geographic data types, and
> associating geographic data with non-geographic attributes.

   As an aside, one aspect of using a dbms (and both PostGIS and postgres are
excellent products) is that they are not topologically correct. That is, a
common boundary between two polygons is stored twice, once for each polygon,
rather than as a single arc with identification for the areas to each side.

   Folks who are interested in spatial analyses more than just computerized
cartography ought to take a look at GRASS (Geographic Resources Analysis
Support System) <http://grass.osgeo.org/>. The GUI is now written in Python
using wxPython and modules can be written in Python or C.

Rich