PostgreSQL Conference West 2011

This mini-tutorial is aimed at PostgreSQL users who want to learn more about PostGIS.

You should be familiar with SQL and the concepts around a relational database. No previous experience with GIS is required.

Some topics we'll cover:

• Installation (compiling, installing, and creating a postgis aware database template)
• Education about postigs/gis topics including:
  • Projections
  • Geometry types
  • Units of measurements
• Database design with postgis data types (ie, using the point type instead of storing lat/long in two separate columns)
• How to import large amounts of gis data (using the WKT, and EWKT formats for geographic objects)
• Table/Database Index optimization with GIS datatypes
• Common queries, such as:
  • How far away is...
  • Which points of interests are within N kms...
  • What is the closest point of interest from another...
  • Give me the length of...
  • What is the area covered by...
  • Does point A and point B intersect...
• Tools to visualize and QA your data
• Exporting your data from the database in other formats (GML, KML, etc..)
• Community resources

Users are welcome to follow along with their own instance of postgres during the tutorial.

R is the leading free software environment for advanced mathematical and statistical computing and graphics. PL/R is a PostgreSQL extension that allows the use of R from within PostgreSQL for advanced analytics in a simple, efficient, and controlled manner.

This presentation will introduce the audience to PL/R, starting with installation on various OS's, and taking them through basic usage and a few more advanced examples of its power.

This will be a 90 minute Mini-Tutorial on PostgreSQL High Availability.
We'll cover a number of HA building blocks such as Warm/Hot Standby and
connection pooling, then we'll spend some time looking at HA architectures and
specific scenarios. Topics include:

- Warm Standby
- Hot Standby
- SLONY
- PG POOL II
- pg_bouncer
- IP Alias Management
- Bucardo

- Putting it all together (HA Architectures & Scenarios)
- Failover Switchover and Reset

- HA Walkthrough of at least one end 2 end solution (with Failover)

- We'll also cover some upcoming technologies:
-- Postgres-R
-- Postgres-XC

Project Mogwai can be found at mogwai.sourceforge.net. [I am not affiliated with Project Mogwai.] There are several data related components, but the focus of the mini-tutorial is ERDesigner.

A real-world use case will be presented, involving:

1. Reverse engineering of an existing database.
2. ERD creation and modification.
3. Testing with automatically generated DDL.
4. Provisioning for production needs.

Media will be available with the Java runtime and ERDesigner, so bring your laptop!