GIS - It's All About the Data
When you’re working with GIS, it’s all about the data. Once you have the spatial data to work with, you need to clean and manage it in order to effectively use it, and that has been my biggest challenge when working with spatial data. This post attempts to share some of my experiences with a couple systems for storing and managing spatial data.
If you are using PostGIS, see my PostGIS: Table Your Spatial data posts. Part 1 shows how to improve performance with large polygons, part 2 shows how to reduce many small objects.
Excel and VBA for SQL Server Reporting
Let’s imagine that you have a database that contains some data in it that you want to share. Maybe you’ve inherited a SQL Server database and want to provide some basic reports to other users. Does that scenario sounds somewhat familiar?
Installing Scipy? You Need Swap!
I have been working in Python a lot lately. In fact, I've written my own new blog application, RustProof Content, in Python using Flask. It's a Flask app serving almost-static content that is converted to HTML and Jinja2 tags from Markdown. In fact, if you're reading this now, you're looking at RustProof Content!
I've also done quite a bit of work with spatial data, and even dabbled with a bunch of weather data! Most of that was done in IPython Notebooks and I always end up wanting SciPy at some point. SciPy is great, but installing it on a small virtual machine can cause some headaches...
Ode to "The Database"
I'm a big fan of relational databases. Over the years I have tried out various ways to work with and manage data without utilizing a database. Every time I try to do that, I am reminded why I love databases so much... they do one job, and do it well. Manage your data. It's hard to argue with decades of success!
In this post I will be referencing PostgreSQL 9.4 specifically, but most of my arguments and examples should translate to any of the major RDMSs, such as MS SQL Server, Oracle Database, or MySQL.
Colorado Unemployment: Making the Maps
Earlier this month I wrote about a few different software options for GIS related needs. In this post I will give a high-level overview of how I used PostGIS and TileMill to make the maps for the video below. The video shows the unemployment rate for the state of Colorado by county for the years 2000 through 2013.
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