News
July 1, 2017
The 2.3.3 release of PostGIS is now available.
Click the link above for a full list of changes, upgrade details, etc.
Nov 28, 2016
The 2.3.1 release of PostGIS is now available.
Documentation is available here
What is PostGIS?
PostGIS adds support for geographic objects to the PostgreSQL object-relational database. In effect, PostGIS "spatially enables" the PostgreSQL server, allowing it to be used as a backend spatial database for geographic information systems (GIS), much like ESRI's SDE or Oracle's Spatial extension. PostGIS follows the OpenGIS "Simple Features Specification for SQL" and has been certified as compliant with the "Types and Functions" profile.
PostGIS development was started by Refractions Research as a project in open source spatial database technology.
PostGIS is released under the GNU General Public License. PostGIS continues to be developed by a group of contributors led by a Project Steering Committee and new features continue to be added.
Case Studies
Learn how PostGIS is being used around the world.
UC Davis Soil Resource Laboratory
The US Davis Soil Resource Laboratory publishes soil inventory data for the southwest United States using PostGIS and Mapserver. Six months ago they were using shape files for spatial data storage. With PostGIS, their data is integrated in the database and new avenues of display and analysis have been opened for them.
Infoterra, a leading European satellite and aerial imagery provider, runs their data provision and sales systems on PostGIS, and stores the complete Ordnance Survey database on PostGIS.
Institut Géographique National, France
The national mapping agency of France manages over 100 million topographic features in PostGIS/PostgreSQL and provides read/write access to over 100 field researchers around the country.