QGIS

Last updated
QGIS
Developer(s) QGIS Development Team
Initial releaseJuly 2002 (2002-07)
Stable release
3.34.3 [1] OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg / 19 January 2024
Repository
Written in C++, Python, Qt
Platform Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Android (beta)
Available in Multilingual
Type Geographic information system
License GNU GPLv2
Website qgis.org/en/site/ OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

QGIS is a geographic information system (GIS) software that is free and open-source. [2] QGIS supports Windows, macOS, and Linux. [3] It supports viewing, editing, printing, and analysis of geospatial data in a range of data formats. QGIS was previously also known as Quantum GIS.

Contents

Functionality

QGIS functions as geographic information system (GIS) software, allowing users to analyze and edit spatial information, in addition to composing and exporting graphical maps. [2] QGIS supports raster, vector, mesh, and point cloud layers. [4] Vector data is stored as either point, line, or polygon features. Multiple formats of raster images are supported, and the software can georeference images.

QGIS supports shapefiles, personal geodatabases, dxf, MapInfo, PostGIS, and other industry-standard formats. [5] Web services, including Web Map Service and Web Feature Service, are also supported to allow use of data from external sources. [6]

QGIS integrates with other open-source GIS packages, including PostGIS, GRASS GIS, SAGA GIS, and MapServer. [6] Plugins written in Python or C++ extend QGIS's capabilities. Plugins can geocode using the Google Geocoding API, perform geoprocessing functions similar to those of the standard tools found in ArcGIS, and interface with PostgreSQL/PostGIS, SpatiaLite and MySQL databases.

QGIS is built on top of, and standard installs include, broadly-used open-source GIS format and projection conversion libraries GDAL and proj.

Development

Gary Sherman began development of Quantum GIS in early 2002, and it became an incubator project of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation in 2007. [7] Version 1.0 was released in January 2009. [8]

In 2013, along with release of version 2.0 the name was officially changed from Quantum GIS to QGIS to avoid confusion as both names had been used in parallel. [9] )

Written mainly in C++, QGIS makes extensive use of the Qt library. [6] In addition to Qt, required dependencies of QGIS include GEOS and SQLite. GDAL, GRASS GIS, PostGIS, and PostgreSQL are also recommended, as they provide access to additional data formats. [10]

A screenshot from QGIS-Android in 2014. QGIS-Android screenshot.png
A screenshot from QGIS-Android in 2014.

As of 2017, QGIS is available for multiple operating systems including Mac OS X, Linux, Unix, and Microsoft Windows. [11] There are several third-party apps that allow use of QGIS on mobile devices such as QField (Android, iOS and Windows), Mergin Maps (Android, iOS and Windows) and IntraMaps Roam (Windows). [11]

QGIS can also be used as a graphical user interface to GRASS. QGIS has a small install footprint on the host file system compared to commercial GISs and generally requires less RAM and processing power; hence it can be used on older hardware or running simultaneously with other applications where CPU power may be limited.[ citation needed ]

QGIS is maintained by volunteer developers who regularly release updates and bug fixes. As of 2012, developers have translated QGIS into 48 languages and the application is used internationally in academic and professional environments. Several companies offer support and feature development services. [12]

Function

QGIS enables users to visualize their data using maps, charts, and diagrams while customizing the presentation with a variety of symbology choices. The capabilities for geographical analysis provided by QGIS, including as buffer construction, spatial querying, and geoprocessing. For more complex geographical analysis, users can additionally make use of plugins and algorithms. QGIS also makes it simple to share and publish geospatial data as maps, online services, or print maps in a variety of file formats, such as shapefiles, GeoTIFFs, and KML files.

Screenshot of Print Composer Print composer in QGIS.png
Screenshot of Print Composer

In order to prepare printed map with QGIS, Print Layout is used. It can be used for adding multiple map views, labels, legends, etc.

Licensing

As a free software application under GNU GPLv2, QGIS can be freely modified to perform different or more specialized tasks. Two examples are the QGIS Browser and QGIS Server applications, which use the same code for data access and rendering, but present different front-end interfaces. [13]

Adoption

Many public and private organizations have adopted QGIS, including:

Release History

"LTR" indicates a Long Term Release. Detailed changelogs are available for releases 2.0 and later. [18]

QGIS Version History
VersionCodenameRelease DateNotes
0.0.1-alpha2002-07First public release.
1.0Kore2009-01-05
2.0Dufour2013-09-08New vector API, integration of SEXTANTE geoprocessing, symbology and labeling overhaul.  Dropped "Quantum" from the name.
3.0Girona2018-02-23Significant rewrite, upgrading to Qt5, PyQt5, and Python 3.
3.2Bonn2018-06-22
3.4 LTRMadeira2018-10-26
3.6Noosa2019-02-22
3.8Zanzibar2019-06-21
3.10 LTRA Coruña2019-10-25
3.12Bucureşti2020-02-21
3.14Pi2020-06-19New temporal controller.
3.16 LTRHannover2020-10-23
3.18Zürich2021-02-19
3.20Odense2021-06-18
3.22 LTRBiałowieża2021-10-22
3.24Tisler2022-02-18
3.26Buenos Aires2022-06-17Improved pointcloud and 3D support. New profile plotting framework.
3.28 LTRFirenze2022-10-21
3.30's-Hertogenbosch2023-03-03
3.32Lima2023-06-23
3.34 LTRPrizren2023-10-27
3.36Maidenhead2024-02-23

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PostGIS</span> Geospatial extension for the PostgreSQL Database

PostGIS is an open source software program that adds support for geographic objects to the PostgreSQL object-relational database. PostGIS follows the Simple Features for SQL specification from the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Esri</span> Geospatial software & SaaS company

Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc., doing business as Esri, is an American multinational geographic information system (GIS) software company headquartered in Redlands, California. It is best known for its ArcGIS products. With a 40% market share, Esri is the world's leading supplier of GIS software, web GIS and geodatabase management applications.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GRASS GIS</span> Geographical information system software

Geographic Resources Analysis Support System is a geographic information system (GIS) software suite used for geospatial data management and analysis, image processing, producing graphics and maps, spatial and temporal modeling, and visualizing. It can handle raster, topological vector, image processing, and graphic data.

GeoTIFF is a public domain metadata standard which allows georeferencing information to be embedded within a TIFF file. The potential additional information includes map projection, coordinate systems, ellipsoids, datums, and everything else necessary to establish the exact spatial reference for the file. The GeoTIFF format is fully compliant with TIFF 6.0, so software incapable of reading and interpreting the specialized metadata will still be able to open a GeoTIFF format file.

A GIS software program is a computer program to support the use of a geographic information system, providing the ability to create, store, manage, query, analyze, and visualize geographic data, that is, data representing phenomena for which location is important. The GIS software industry encompasses a broad range of commercial and open-source products that provide some or all of these capabilities within various information technology architectures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sol Katz</span> American software developer

Solomon 'Sol' Katz was an American software developer who pioneered geospatial computer software and left behind a large body of work in the form of computer applications and format specifications while at the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. This early archive provided both source code and applications freely available to the community, including the Windows application PC-MOSS, where MOSS is the earliest known Open Source Geographic Information System. Katz was also a frequent contributor to many geospatial list servers.

A Web Map Service (WMS) is a standard protocol developed by the Open Geospatial Consortium in 1999 for serving georeferenced map images over the Internet. These images are typically produced by a map server from data provided by a GIS database.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shapefile</span> Geospatial vector data format

The shapefile format is a geospatial vector data format for geographic information system (GIS) software. It is developed and regulated by Esri as a mostly open specification for data interoperability among Esri and other GIS software products. The shapefile format can spatially describe vector features: points, lines, and polygons, representing, for example, water wells, rivers, and lakes. Each item usually has attributes that describe it, such as name or temperature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ArcGIS</span> Geographic information system maintained by Esri

ArcGIS is a family of client, server and online geographic information system (GIS) software developed and maintained by Esri.

MrSID is an acronym that stands for multiresolution seamless image database. It is a file format developed and patented by LizardTech for encoding of georeferenced raster graphics, such as orthophotos.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">JUMP GIS</span>

Java Unified Mapping Program (JUMP) is a Java based vector and raster GIS and programming framework. Current development continues under the OpenJUMP name.

A spatial database is a general-purpose database that has been enhanced to include spatial data that represents objects defined in a geometric space, along with tools for querying and analyzing such data.

The Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo), is a non-profit non-governmental organization whose mission is to support and promote the collaborative development of open geospatial technologies and data. The foundation was formed in February 2006 to provide financial, organizational and legal support to the broader Libre/Free and open-source geospatial community. It also serves as an independent legal entity to which community members can contribute code, funding and other resources.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GDAL</span> Translator library for raster and vector geospatial data formats

The Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL) is a computer software library for reading and writing raster and vector geospatial data formats, and is released under the permissive X/MIT style free software license by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. As a library, it presents a single abstract data model to the calling application for all supported formats. It may also be built with a variety of useful command line interface utilities for data translation and processing. Projections and transformations are supported by the PROJ library.

JTS Topology Suite is an open-source Java software library that provides an object model for Euclidean planar linear geometry together with a set of fundamental geometric functions. JTS is primarily intended to be used as a core component of vector-based geomatics software such as geographical information systems. It can also be used as a general-purpose library providing algorithms in computational geometry.

Mapnik is an open-source mapping toolkit for desktop and server based map rendering, written in C++. Artem Pavlenko, the original developer of Mapnik, set out with the explicit goal of creating beautiful maps by employing the sub-pixel anti-aliasing of the Anti-Grain Geometry (AGG) library. Mapnik now also has a Cairo rendering backend. For handling common software tasks such as memory management, file system access, regular expressions, and XML parsing, Mapnik utilizes the Boost C++ libraries. An XML file can be used to define a collection of mapping objects that determine the appearance of a map, or objects can be constructed programmatically in C++, Python, and Node.js.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SpatiaLite</span> Spatial extension to SQLite

SpatiaLite is a spatial extension to SQLite, providing vector geodatabase functionality. It is similar to PostGIS, Oracle Spatial, and SQL Server with spatial extensions, although SQLite/SpatiaLite aren't based on client-server architecture: they adopt a simpler personal architecture. i.e. the whole SQL engine is directly embedded within the application itself: a complete database simply is an ordinary file which can be freely copied and transferred from one computer/OS to a different one without any special precaution.

GIS Live DVD is a type of the thematic Live CD containing GIS/RS applications and related tutorials, and sample data sets. The general sense of a GIS Live DVD is to demonstrate the power of FLOSS GIS and encourage users to start on FLOSS GIS. However, a disc can be used for GIS data processing and training, too. A disc usually includes some selected Linux-based or Wine (software)-enabled Windows applications for GIS and Remote Sensing use. Using this disc the end users can execute GIS functions to get experience in free and open source software solutions or solve some simple business operations. The set-up and the operating behaviour of the applications can also be studied prior to building real FLOSS GIS-based systems. Recently a LiveDVD image is stored and booted from USB.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">WebP</span> Image file format

WebP is a raster graphics file format developed by Google intended as a replacement for JPEG, PNG, and GIF file formats. It supports both lossy and lossless compression, as well as animation and alpha transparency.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DBeaver</span> Multi-platform database administration software

DBeaver is a SQL client software application and a database administration tool. For relational databases it uses the JDBC application programming interface (API) to interact with databases via a JDBC driver. For other databases (NoSQL) it uses proprietary database drivers. It provides an editor that supports code completion and syntax highlighting. It provides a plug-in architecture that allows users to modify much of the application's behavior to provide database-specific functionality or features that are database-independent. This is a desktop application written in Java and based on Eclipse platform.

References

  1. ↑ "Release 3.34.3". 19 January 2024. Retrieved 19 January 2024.
  2. 1 2 "QGIS Official Website". QGIS. Retrieved 16 October 2013.
  3. ↑ "Download QGIS". www.qgis.org. Retrieved 2023-12-31.
  4. ↑ "QGIS project README file". github.com/qgis. Retrieved 20 March 2024.
  5. ↑ Gray, James (2008-03-26). "Getting Started With Quantum GIS". Linux Journal.
  6. 1 2 3 Cavallini, Paolo (August 2007). "Free GIS desktop and analyses: QuantumGIS, the easy way". The Global Geospatial Magazine.
  7. ↑ OSGeo (February 2008). "OSGeo Annual Report 2007".
  8. ↑ Tim Sutton (January 23, 2009). "Announcing the release of QGIS 1.0 'Kore'" . Retrieved 2009-01-26.
  9. ↑ "Changelog for QGIS 2.0 - Quantum GIS is now known only as 'QGIS'". QGIS. Retrieved 1 January 2020.
  10. ↑ "Project details for Quantum GIS - Quantum GIS 0.9.0". Freshmeat. Retrieved 2008-12-31.
  11. 1 2 "Download QGIS". QGIS.org. Retrieved March 31, 2017.
  12. ↑ "Commercial support". www.qgis.org. Retrieved 2017-05-01.
  13. ↑ "QGIS Server Guide/Manual — QGIS Documentation documentation". docs.qgis.org. Retrieved 2023-07-07.
  14. ↑ "QGIS related repositories on GitHub - NSA". GitHub. Retrieved 31 March 2020.
  15. ↑ "The Economist". view.e.economist.com. Archived from the original on 7 July 2023. Retrieved 2023-07-07.
  16. ↑ "QuantumGIS (QGIS) – freie GIS-Software". Land Vorarlberg. Archived from the original on 16 October 2013. Retrieved 12 October 2013.
  17. ↑ "QGIS related repositories on GitHub - LINZ". GitHub. Retrieved 31 March 2020.
  18. ↑ "Visual Changelogs". www.qgis.org. Retrieved 2022-07-16.
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