New Course: MySQL for geospatial applications

Good news folks!  MySQL has quietly become a very good spatial database that is widely available on almost all web-hosting platforms.  If you are looking for an affordable spatial database solution its worth giving MySQL a look.

PostGIS has long been the gold standard for open source geospatial databases.  MySQL had some spatial capabilities but were pretty limited for real GIS applications.  That changed a few years ago with MySQL version 5.6 and even more with version 8 but it seems that MySQL has still not been given a solid look by most geospatial professionals.  This is unfortunate in my opinion because MySQL has one BIG advantage over PostGIS.  It is available on almost every webhosting platform in existence and you can host your geospatial data in a MySQL database that is accessible from anywhere in the world for only a few dollars per month.  Inexpensive hosting options for PostGIS on the other hand have gone the way of the dinosaur and are essentially non-existent today.  It was this lack of affordable options for PostGIS hosting that caused me to take a second look at MySQL and I liked what I found and wanted to spread the good news.

MySQL today is a very capable option as a spatially enabled database, especially for web-mapping applications.  It does not have all the bells and whistles of PostGIS but I believe it will serve the need for most users.  The biggest deficits in MySQL today relative to PostGIS are the lack of support for transforming between coordinate systems and the lack of support for Z and M coordinates.  The first can be dealt with in web.mapping applications due to the availability of PROJ4 bindings in Javascript, but if you really need Z and M coordinates you are out of luck with MySQL.  If you are an experienced PostGIS user you will notice some functions that are available in PostGIS are not available in MySQL but there are usually workarounds for these.  The major functionality needed by most small to medium-sized web mapping projects is all there.

If you are interested in learning more you can sign up for my new course MySQL for Geospatial Applications today for $9.99 using the coupon code MYSQLGEO,  This offer is good through Dec 1.  All of my other courses are also available during this time period for the same price using the same coupon code.

This course will teach you

  • What a spatial database is and why you shoud use one
  • Review of SQL for non-spatial data
  • SQL functions for spatial data and analysis
  • How to load your GIS data into MySQL
  • How to access your MySQL data from a variety of clients
  • How to set up user accounts and control access to your data
  • How to deploy your MySQL database to a web-hosting platform
  • How to customize MySQL to automate your business logic with stored procedures, custom functions, and triggers

Keep the learning going: Open surce Geospatial courses available NOW for $9.99

February is here and there are a lot of new students from the Black friday and New Years sales.  But I’d like to give everyone the chance to buy another course or two at $9.99  before spring arrives to motivate them to keep the learning going until spring arrives As a bonus its beneficial to the instructors, like me, if you buy now. So if you are looking for ways to continue your professional development during the winter, please consider an Udemy course on open source geospatial technologies.  You can buy them TODAY and watch them when you are ready.

All of my courses on open source geospatial technology will be available through February 9 using the coupon code FEB2023.

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New Course: Google Tools for GIS Applications

I am pleased to announce a new course titled “Google Tools for GIS Applications“. This course is an overview of Google Cloud Platform tools, analytical tools, and mapping API’s that may be of interest to geospatial professionals.  The course is broad rather than deep.  My goal is to show you how to get started with many different products with an emphasis on geospatial applications.  In many cases there are existing courses that cover the details but with little information on geospatial applications and this course is intended to fill in those gaps.

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Review: Google Pixelbook Go – An ideal travel notebook for open source geospatial professionals

About 9 months ago I purchased a Google Pixelbook Go. I was interested in a pure Linux computer to help learn the operating system and to help me support my students who use Linux in my courses on open source GIS technology. Although I have very high-end WIndows and Mac notebooks, my Pixelbook has quickly become the computer that I reach for 95% of the time.  Especially for travel. Continue reading “Review: Google Pixelbook Go – An ideal travel notebook for open source geospatial professionals”

New Course: GeoServer from A-Z

I am glad to announce a new course on GeoServer that is available NOW on Udemy.com.   GeoServer is open source software that will allow you to provide access to your data over the internet to anyone in the world.  It is the open source equivalent of ArcServer in the ESRI ecosystem. GeoServer makes it possible to publish your data as WMS and/or WFS web services that can be used directly in desktop GIS software or as web pages without programming.

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QGIS 3.10 LTR for GIS Professionals available now.

This course is an update of my course QGIS 3.0 for GIS Professionals.  Those of you who have already registered for this course will have access to the updated materials immediately.  As the most recent Long Term Release, QGIS 3.10 LTR is much more stable and well developed than the beta version of QGIS 3.0 that I used to develop the original course.

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New Course: QField Quickstart

QField is an open-source Android based mobile data collection and/or viewing application that is tightly integrated with QGIS.

QGIS is used to set up the project using standard QGIS tools.

If the layers in your project are stored in a PostGIS database and a mobile data connection is available then changes made in QField are made directly to your database and visible in real-time to anyone that has a client to your database. This, in my view, is the mobile data collection killer app.

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Working with PostGIS data from within Leaflet.js (or any other client side mapping API)

This 3-part mini-course is my attempt to explain the basic concepts of working with PostGIS data from within the Leaflet.js mapping API.  Technically this is not Leaflet programming. In this scenario Leaflet.js simply becomes the canvas on which your geospatial data is displayed on a web map.  All of the interaction with the geospatial data occur through very common and standard methods of working with enterprise level databases, but with a geospatial twist. Continue reading “Working with PostGIS data from within Leaflet.js (or any other client side mapping API)”