This course is intended to provide an introduction to spatial databases in general and PostGIS in particular to GIS professionals who are interested in expanding their skillset to multi-user enterprise level spatial databases. This course uses the latest (as of 2/18) versions of PostgreSQL (10.1), PostGIS (2.4), and QGIS (3.0). I believe it is the most current and thorough course on spatial databases available today. You will learn
- What a spatial database is and why you would want to use one.
- What SQL is, why you would want to use it, and how it can be applied to geospatial concepts.
- How to install PostGIS locally for development purposes and how to access a production version via a network or the internet.
- How to load your spatial data into PostGIS and access it from a variety of clients, especially QGIS
- The basics of SQL for both spatial and non-spatial queries
- How to validate data and control user access with the tools built-in to PostGIS
- Optimizing your queries for the best performance
- How to work with raster data in PostGIS
- The basics of programming custom functions with PL/pgSQL
- The basics of database administration to keep your database operating smoothly
