In the previous chapter, we learned about data exchange formats, which can be used to store our layers on our hard drive persistently in some files. Data exchange formats have the clear advantage of portability; however, we end up with files representing layers scattered through various folders. This isn't a problem when we have only a few layers or a well-designed folder structure, but it is not feasible for larger amounts of data. There is a solution for storing larger amounts of structured data in one easily accessible place--build a database. In this chapter, we will learn about databases in general, spatial databases, and how we can create a PostGIS database from QGIS easily.
We will cover the following topics in this chapter:
- Spatial and non-spatial databases
- Creating PostGIS tables from QGIS
- Spatial indexing
- Visualizing PostGIS tables in...
