Is this applicable with GIS?
I'm just going to get familiar with GIS, but I like to know if this is possible with current GIS applications / tools ...
- I am getting the point for the geocoding address. The easy part.
- Now if the point falls within the border (can be city / county / state) then I need to get the data (any id / flag) associated with the border.
- Based on the id / flag, I will apply some business logic.
My question is ...
- How to define the border? What tools should I use for this?
- How can I store the boundary definition in the database to check if the point falls within it? This should be done in the back and not on visual maps as we are not going to show / use maps.
- How do I bind my user data (id / flag) to the above border definition?
Hopefully I have a correct guess about the possibilities of GIS. Most of the examples I see are of people trying to show maps with data, which is definitely not what I'm looking for. Also please suggest me some tools / books on this subject.
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How to define the border? What tools should I use for this?
The boundary can (and probably is) a shape (polygon, multipolygon) that you can provide in any current GIS format. You will need to think about the projection and the data you provide.
How can I store the boundary definition in the database to check if the point has hit it?
Use PostGreSQL and this is spatial extensions ( Postgis ). Import the polygon from (1) into the database (e.g. FWTOOLS ogr2ogr
). This will give you a nice geometry field in the table on which you can use the nice Postgis geometry function in SQL standard mode (St_Intersects would be appropriate here): find out if a point is geographically intersecting with our polygon, or you can use ST_Within to find out ok whether the point falls into the polygon)
How do I bind my user data (id / flag) to the above border definition?
Just add an extra column to the table where it is stored geometry
.
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