Managing Large Geospatial Datasets With Postgis

Storing Massive Geospatial Data

As geospatial datasets grow larger in size and complexity, effectively storing, processing, and analyzing the data poses challenges for database administrators and GIS professionals. PostGIS, as a spatial database extender for PostgreSQL, provides advanced capabilities for working with big geospatial data.

Overcoming Database Size Limits

By default, PostgreSQL databases are limited to 32 TB in size. However, various configuration options allow much larger databases:

• Tablespaces spread data across multiple disks
• Partitioning divides tables into smaller pieces
• Clustering stores related rows together

Careful physical database design is crucial for performance as the number of spatial features reaches billions. Strategically distributing data across available storage using tablespaces and partitioning enables ever-expanding database capacity.

Configuring PostgreSQL for Large Datasets

Important PostgreSQL configuration settings for optimizing storage and performance with big data include:

• Increasing max_connections for concurrent users
• Raising shared_buffers for cache memory
• Tuning work_mem for complex queries
• Increasing checkpoint segments

Additional hardware resources like RAM, CPUs, and high-performance SSDs also help when working with massive datasets. Benchmarking and testing parameters on realistic data ensures optimal PostgreSQL configuration.

Partitioning Data Across Multiple Disks

Table partitioning is an essential aspect for managing big geospatial data. Common partitioning strategies include:

• Range partitioning on numeric columns
• List partitioning on distinct categories
• Hash partitioning randomly across partitions

Carefully benchmarking I/O throughput helps determine optimal per-partition sizing. Partition pruning dramatically speeds up queries by excluding unrelated partitions via constraints. Maintaining historic point-in-time partitions facilitates temporal analysis.

Processing Performance with Spatial Indexes

Spatial indexes are special database indexes optimized for speeding up geospatial queries. Choosing the optimal spatial index drastically impacts performance at scale.

Speeding Up Spatial Queries

Spatial indexes improve performance by filtering full table scans to only relevant subset of rows. Key techniques include:

• Indexing frequently queried geometry columns
• Clustering related features spatially
• Improving cost estimates with statistics

Benchmarking explains how different indexes influence query plans. Targeted indexes avoid unnecessary data access during spatial filtering and transformations.

Choosing Optimal Spatial Index Types

PostGIS offers several spatial index types, each with pros and cons:

• GiST – General balanced performance
• SP-GiST – Greater selectivity and efficiency
• R-Tree – Faster for simple geometry shapes
• BRIN – Small indexes for massive tables

In-depth analysis guides optimal spatial index selection tailored to the data structure, geometry types, query workload, and desired operations.

Example CREATE INDEX Syntax

Creating PostGIS spatial indexes uses standard SQL syntax, for example:

CREATE INDEX roads_geom_idx
  ON roads
  USING GIST (the_geom); 

Additional clauses fine-tune performance behavior such as fill factor, bufferring, and verbosity level. Spatial indexes also aid related GROUP BY, ORDER BY and DISTINCT queries.

Efficient Spatial Analytics

Processing and deriving insights from huge geospatial datasets stresses database resources. Careful performance optimization keeps analytic workflows running smoothly.

Optimizing Geospatial Analysis

Key techniques for accelerating PostGIS spatial analysis include:

• Pre-filtering datasets before analysis
• Tuning analysis tolerance thresholds
• Batching complex operations
• Caching intermediary computations

Understanding the computational geometry behind each function helps minimize unnecessary processing. Analyzing sampling subsets gives guidance for configuring larger batch jobs.

Parallel Processing with Multicore CPUs

Modern multicore servers provide abundant CPU power. PostgreSQL parallel query capabilities harness available cores, for example:

SELECT ST_Union(geom) 
  FROM polygons
  GROUP BY class
  PARALLEL 4; 

Increasing parallel workers boosts performance until IO or interconnect bandwidth saturated. Parallel aware algorithms scale near linearly while coordinating worker thread autonomy.

Example Parallel Queries

Large dataset examples utilizing parallel processing power include:

• Massive nationwide merging and dissolving
• Accelerating complex raster calculations
• Speeding topologically complex buffer creation

Tuning parallel configuration based on hardware experiments prevents wasted resources or excessive memory usage. Visualizing timings with EXPLAIN ANALYZE confirms improvements.

Visualization and Delivery

Delivering interactive maps and spatial analysis from vast geo-databases taxes traditional GIS servers. Optimized vector and raster rendering coupled with caching improves responsiveness.

Quickly Rendering Vector and Raster Data

Strategies for accelerating geospatial visualization include:

• Serving simplified data to clients
• Pre-rendering raster tile caches
• Compressingreturned geospatial JSON

Understanding output use cases balances precision vs performance. Benchmarking identifies visualize bottlenecks for targeted improvements.

Serving Tiles and Web Services

GeoServer publishes PostGIS data to web clients using:

• OGC standard services like WMS and WFS
• Optimized vector tiles for maps
• Cached image tiles and pyramids

Configuring connection pools,caches, compression and bandwidth limits prevents overloaded servers. Monitoring requests, traffic and errors ensures quality of service.

Example GeoServer Configurations

Key GeoServer optimizations includes:

• Increasing simulatenous connections
• Accelerating tiles with GPU processing
• Using proxy servers for request caching

Balancing simplicity and customization generates scalable spatial data services. Checking that optimizations improve real-world workflows prevents unused complexity.

Example Queries for Large Datasets

Efficiently querying billions of spatial rows requires optimized queries minimizing full table scans. Targeted indexes, partitioning, and parallelization speed responsiveness.

Selecting Big Geometries Collections

Retrieving large geometry collections can utilize parallel scanning and output compression:

  
SELECT gid, ST_AsGeoJSON(geom) AS geom
  FROM parcels
  WHERE ST_Intersects(geom, $bounding_polygon)
  PARALLEL 4;

Testing different formats like GeoJSON determines most compact representation given client bandwidth constraints.

Filtering Points Within Polygons

Finding point features falling inside complex polygons leverages spatial indexes:

CREATE INDEX sensors_geom_idx ON sensors
  USING GIST(geom);
   
SELECT * FROM sensors
WHERE ST_Within(geom, $search_area);  

Ensuring query planner correctly utilizes index requires analyzing geometry statistics distributions.

Clustering Millions of Coordinates

Grouping millions of lat/lon points by spatial location utilizes spatial clustering algorithms built into PostGIS, harnessing multiple CPU cores:

 
SELECT cluster_id, ST_Centroid(ST_Collect(geom)) 
  FROM gps_points
  GROUP BY cluster_id
  PARALLEL 8;  

Increasing number of workers subdivides data for independent parallel processing while merging aggregates back together.