There is a lot of crazy stuff going on to make/utilize a spatial database. Before I go digging around for an answer to this, maybe someone can critique this approach and how it works against the OFBiz entity engine.
In order to access anything useful from a geospatial database (in my case PostgreSQL using PostGis) you have to be able to call functions. So, first question: Are there tools that exist already in OFBiz to call functions that exist in the database or do you _have to use the SQLProcessor to run a query with a function? Second question: The data is stored as a "geometry" data type in the database. Most everything that is going to be consumed by OFBiz (Google Maps, etc) AFAICT, wants coordinate pairs and not geometry object. Is it better performance/development wise to create those functions in the database or to process the data in OFBiz? For a little background, this is the kind of query necessary to get a coordinate pair from a polygon geometry: select gid, ( ((select st_x(astext(transform(st_pointn(st_exteriorring(ST_GeometryN(the_geom, 1)),1),4030))) from precinct where gid=1), (select st_y(astext(transform(st_pointn(st_exteriorring(ST_GeometryN(the_geom, 1)),1),4030))) from precinct where gid=1)), ((select st_x(astext(transform(st_pointn(st_exteriorring(ST_GeometryN(the_geom, 1)),2),4030))) from precinct where gid=1), (select st_y(astext(transform(st_pointn(st_exteriorring(ST_GeometryN(the_geom, 1)),2),4030))) from precinct where gid=1)), ((select st_x(astext(transform(st_pointn(st_exteriorring(ST_GeometryN(the_geom, 1)),3),4030))) from precinct where gid=1), (select st_y(astext(transform(st_pointn(st_exteriorring(ST_GeometryN(the_geom, 1)),3),4030))) from precinct where gid=1)) ...n->number of points in polygon ) from precinct where gid =1; ----- Original Message ---- From: Al Byers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: dev@ofbiz.apache.org Sent: Friday, December 7, 2007 12:47:37 AM Subject: Re: GIS Tools/modeling Chris, Sorry, I did not get around to implementing os geocoders. Here are some links I came across, however: http://www.ontok.com/geocode/compare http://www.ontok.com/api http://geocoder.us/ One possible alternative is to find the code for a geocoder and use some of the free data that is available for it to operate on. I did not look into that route, but it seems there should be plenty of examples out there and tons of TIGER data. -Al
