3: Spatially Enabled Relational Databases

Lesson Goals

Students understand the concept of a spatially explicit relational database and will be familiar with the use of PostGIS, PostgreSQL and QGIS.

Lesson Outcomes

Students will understand:

How PostGIS is a special extension or use of postgresql tables and functions. How spatial data is generally represented in PostGIS That there are a number of different formats for storing geometries including WKT, WKB, GML, KML, GeoJSON, and SVG

Students can:

• Convert GIS data stored in external formats and convert them to a PostGIS data layer
• Query spatial data attributes stored in a PostGIS database
• Utilize basic SQL commands