On Mon, Jan 23, 2017 at 11:08 AM, Kased, Razy (Chemistry and Geosciences) <rkased@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > I recently came across this question: "What is the purpose of PostGIS on > PostgreSQL?" and wanted to know what this mailing list had to respond with. PostGIS is a SQL wrapper to the GEOS library which lets you do a large number of really complex things that relate to coordinate systems on a precise level. Postgres geo types are useful for a very small set of uses cases with a small but important overlap with PostGIS: indexed bounded box lookups which is a fairly common requirement. All else being equal, less dependencies are good so if that's all you need work off the built in types. If you need PostGIS though you really need it. For example, I heavily use the ST_UNION aggregate function to build large market boundaries from smaller zip code boundaries and it works beautifully. There is no analog to that in the built in stuff. merlin -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
