I've been seeing the recent traffic about setting up and using postgresql, which it seems not exactly straightforward. Is there a document somewhere that explains the reasons why one might want to move to using a database? Is it data management, speed, convenience (after getting it set up), something else?
Jerry
Gerald Nelson
Professor, Dept. of Agricultural and Consumer Economics
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
office: 217-333-6465
cell: 217-390-7888
315 Mumford Hall
1301 W. Gregory
Urbana, IL 61801
On 25/03/07 16:35, Gerald Nelson wrote:
I've been seeing the recent traffic about setting up and using
postgresql, which it seems not exactly straightforward. Is there a
document somewhere that explains the reasons why one might want to
move to using a database? Is it data management, speed, convenience
(after getting it set up), something else?
For me its data management and convenience. Being able to easily combine different data tables (including through the use of views) really makes life much easier than having to edit dbf files in OpenOffice.
In terms of speed, this actually really depends on the commands, but the db drivers often introduce quite some overhead. Quite a while ago, I actually posted a revised version of d.vect.chart which accessed the data differently and showed a clear speed-up (http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/grass5/2006-October/026503.html).
Another advantage of more sophisticated backends than dbf is that you have access to a much richer set of SQL commands.
Moritz