After a long series of release candidates, the much anticipated 1.0.0 version of PostGIS has been released. The 1.0.0 version includes substantial changes over the original 0.X series, most importantly a new on-disk format which is both more compact and faster to access. The 1.0.0 version is compatible with PostgreSQL 7.2 and higher, but is most tighhtly integrated with the PostgreSQL 8.0 and higher releases.
New features in 1.0.0 include:
* Smaller and faster on-disk formats
* Improved selectivity estimates, including support for join selectivity and sub-selects
* Hex-based canonical format, for driftless dump and restore
* 4-D geometries
* New functions:
o Polygonize
o AsGML
o ForceRHR
o SnapToGrid
o Geometry Constructors
* Improved JDBC interface with jdbc2 support
* 64-bit platform support
* Performance improvements for common boolean operators
My plan now is to test the acceptance of an (company) internal information system, just to optimize the workflow between GIS-workers (like me) and other colleagues that always need some temporary maps or (fast) geographic information in general. The problem is that our results are usually the product of a discussion between the GIS-worker (knowing and explaining the possibilities of GIS) and the client (explaining the problem and objectives). I’m not sure if my colleagues are willing to learn some basic features of GIS to finally use a simple GIS by themselves. A first approach was the use of ArcGIS Publisher, with the result that the one colleague working with ArcReader and my published data is really excited about it. He don’t has to show up every time he needs minor changes like another view, scale or combination of certain layers. And of course it saves a lot of my time as well.
Anyhow, ArcGIS Publisher is one option. Another one will be a browser-based information system with the advantage, compared to ArcGIS Publisher, of centralised data management. To accomplish this test with ESRI-software we would have to license additionally at least ArcEditor, ArcSDE and ArcIMS. Since we’re not focused on IT-projects that costs would be pretty heavy for our internal software budget. Thus I thought I’ll give it try using open source software (and of course because I know it works quite well) – PostGIS/PostgreSQL as backend, UMN mapserver or deegree as middleware and a nice browser interface as frontend. Let’s see when I find time to set something up…
Besides the idea of that internal information system, I’m thinking about using PostGIS as “drudge” to swap out intensive geoprocessing tasks. Performing those tasks on my ArcGIS workstation means spare time for me because it’s getting so busy that I’m not able to do anything else but waiting until the process is done.
PD: I really would suggest some open source sceptical companies to have a look at this great piece of software – it’s not evil, it’s just competition 
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