If your project benefits from using a database then Deltares offers the use of the relational database managementsystem PostgreSQL/PostGIS. There might be reasons to choose another type of database, but the benefit of using PostgreSQL/PostGIS is that it ismaintained by IT, meaning that servers, operating system and installation of updates is done in an automatic way. Besides this, there is a lot of experience available at Deltares in use of PostgreSQL/PostGIS including scripting with Python and R. The best reason is that is an open source RDBMS with excellent spatial query options (create as well as discover). 

This article will provide a step-by-step guide in using PostgreSQL/PostGIS (PG) from the request to dissemination of data to end-users. 

Step-by-step guide

  1. Request for a database via topdesk call (assign to ICT-A&P), with the following remarks
    1. specify project number
    2. specify amount of data storage needed
    3. mention if you need the extension PostGIS
    4. specify the name of the database
    5. specify who (Deltares colleagues only!!) should have access
  2. Install pgAdmin (latest) from https://www.pgadmin.org/download/
  3. Install PostgreSQL/PostGIS on your local machine (without pgAdmin), follow the steps in this article
  4. Get informed of the basics and application of PostgreSQL/PostGIS within projects at Deltares via the e-learning platform

Why install it locally? It is good practice to separate development and production database (and tools in common). 

From now on, the use case you are working on determines what the database will look like. Or in other words, data modelling for efficient storage and ease of extraction of data might be necessary. You can find all information on internet on the best approach to be taken.

Tutorials

General PostgreSQL tutorials can be found at https://www.postgresql.org/docs/online-resources/ and at https://learnpostgres.dev/ (also checkout Coursera.org)

PostGIS tutorials can be found Youtube and PostGIS.net.

Documentation

PostgreSQL and PostGIS are very well documented. Please visit PostgreSQL documentation respectively PostGIS Documentation.

Automation with Python

For automation and accessing PostgreSQL/PostGIS via Python you need at least the basic adapter psycopg2-binary (check) (it's important that the psycopg2-binary is installed, not the psycopg2 package).
Very helpfull are the packages sqlalchemy and geoalchemy. 



Disclaimer