Re: distance vector databases and country maps

Frank,
In terms of storing GIS (geographic informations systems) data in
PostgreSQL, check out PostGIS: http://postgis.refractions.net . It is a
LGPL extension to PostgreSQL to provide full spatial database
functionality for pgsql. The built-in types are just not up to full GIS
work.

As for your particular problem, yes, acquiring GIS data, particularly
detailed GIS data, can be expensive. It depends a great deal on the
country you are working in. Data here in Canada is terribly expensive;
in the USA it is much more reasonable (even free for some data sets). I
am sure there are government agencies in Germany which have very
detailed GIS data for your country, but I have no idea which ones :) I
have found the the GIS portal site http://www.geocomm.com is a good
starting point when looking for free data. Free data tends to be more
coarse than the alternatives but then at least it is free :)

Happy mapping,
Paul

> At 05:33 PM 10/6/01 +0200, Frank Jeordens wrote:
> >I am looking for info on free/open source (or if that's not available,
> >any other product) products which can be integrated with PostgreSQL that
> >provide geometric vector data on geographic maps.
> >
> >In particular, I need that for Germany. What I want to do is to find
> >cities within a 50-100 km radius of any given location on the map. I
> >know that quite a few people are working on this and that such solutions
> >exist; I just don't know where to start looking. Also, my impression is
> >that all of these solutions are heavily copyrighted, patented etc. and
> >that it's probably really expensive to get to use this kind of data.
> >
> >Can anyone help out with info, starting points?
> >
> >Thanks, Frank