Introducing Crunchy Data Warehouse: A next-generation Postgres-native data warehouse. Crunchy Data Warehouse Learn more
Paul Ramsey
Paul Ramsey
The raster functionality in PostGIS has been part of the main extension since it was introduced. When PostGIS 3 is released, if you want raster functionality you will need to install both the core extension, and also the extension. Breaking out the raster functionality allows packagers to more easily build stripped down "just the basics" PostGIS without also building the raster dependencies, which include the somewhat heavy GDAL library. The raster functionality remains intact however, a...
Read MoreDavid Thomas
David Thomas
Version 2.28 ( release notes ) of the GNU C library introduces many changes to the collations it provides. Collations determine how strings are compared and by default, PostgreSQL uses the operating system’s collations which on Linux means glibC. When your operating system updates to this version of glibc and you aren't using the “C” or “POSIX” collation, you may encounter some differently ordered indexes. This unexpected change in the order of indexes will lead to incorrectly ordered query resu...
Read MorePaul Ramsey
Paul Ramsey
Vector tiles are the new hotness , allowing large amounts of dynamic data to be sent for rendering right on web clients and mobile devices, and making very beautiful and highly interactive maps possible. Since the introduction of ST_AsMVT() , people have been generating their tiles directly in the database more and more, and as a result wanting tile generation to go faster and faster. Every tile generation query has to carry out the following steps: • Gather all the relevant rows for the tile...
Read MorePaul Ramsey
Paul Ramsey
With the release of PostGIS 3.0 , queries that geometry columns will return rows using a Hilbert curve ordering, and do so about twice as fast. Whuuuut!?! The history of "ordering by geometry" in PostGIS is mostly pretty bad. Up until version 2.4 (2017), if you did on a geometry column, your rows would be returned using the ordering of the minimum X coordinate value in the geometry. One of the things users expect of "ordering" is that items that are "close" to each other in the ordered li...
Read MorePaul Ramsey
Paul Ramsey
With PostGIS 3.0, it is now possible to generate GeoJSON features directly without any intermediate code, using the new function. The GeoJSON format is a common transport format, between servers and web clients, and even between components of processing chains. Being able to create useful GeoJSON is important for integrating different parts in a modern geoprocessing application. PostGIS has had an for forever, but it does slightly less than most users really need: it takes in a PostGIS geo...
Read MoreJonathan S. Katz
Jonathan S. Katz
One of the reasons that PostgreSQL supports many authentication methods is to help ensure that it can work with multiple external identity management providers. While a lot of people are familiar with having PostgreSQL request a password for logging in, there are other ways to facilitate the management of user authentication depending on your deployment requirements. One method that can be used in larger enterprise environments is using certificates to authenticate between a PostgreSQL clien...
Read MoreAndrew L'Ecuyer
Andrew L'Ecuyer
The Crunchy PostgreSQL Operator supports various forms of storage for provisioning PostgreSQL clusters in a Kubernetes environment. One such provider is Rook , which provides an abstract layer around multiple storage systems available in Kubernetes, which makes it even more convenient to choose between multiple storage engines. One storage engine that Rook supports is Ceph , which provides several types of distributed storage platforms including block-level storage, which is very helpful f...
Read MoreJonathan S. Katz
Jonathan S. Katz
In a lot of PostgreSQL environments, it’s common practice to protect user accounts with a password. Starting with PostgreSQL 10, the way PostgreSQL manages password-based authentication got a major upgrade with the introduction of SCRAM authentication , a well-defined standard that is a significant improvement over the current system in PostgreSQL. What’s better is that almost all PostgreSQL drivers now support this new method of password authentication, which should help drive further adop...
Read MorePaul Ramsey
Paul Ramsey
One of the most popular features of PostGIS 2.5 was the introduction of the "vector tile" output format, via the ST_AsMVT() function. Vector tiles are a transport format for efficiently sending map data from a server to a client for rendering. The vector tile specification describes how raw data are quantized to a grid and then compressed using delta-encoding to make a very small package. Prior to ST_AsMVT() , if you wanted to produce vector tiles from PostGIS you would use a rendering prog...
Read MoreDouglas Hunley
Douglas Hunley
Crunchy Data has recently announced an update to the CIS PostgreSQL Benchmark by the Center for Internet Security , a nonprofit organization that provides publications around standards and best practices for securing technologies systems. This newly published CIS PostgreSQL 11 Benchmark joins the existing CIS Benchmarks for PostgreSQL 9.5 , 9.6 , and 10 while continuing to build upon Crunchy Data's efforts with the PostgreSQL Security Technical Implementation Guide (PostgreSQL STIG )....
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