In this chapter, we learned how to improve the speed of our vector analysis by orders of magnitude. We simply used one of the state-of-the-art tools for quick vector analysis--PostGIS. We also learned more about vector analysis, some of their pitfalls, and how to get more out of our spatial database. We carried out a spatial analysis, which would have been cumbersome in other desktop GIS software, to gain valuable extra information from our data. Of course, PostGIS and PostgreSQL have capabilities far beyond the scope of this chapter; therefore, if you are planning to work with spatial relational databases, it is definitely worth digging in deeper, and reading additional sources focused on PostGIS.
In the next chapter, we will focus on raster analysis, and learn about the most essential raster tools. We will create a decision problem where we have to choose the best site...