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).
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.
A coverage is the digital representation of some spatio-temporal phenomenon. ISO 19123 provides the definition:
A GIS file format is a standard for encoding geographical information into a computer file, as a specialized type of file format for use in geographic information systems (GIS) and other geospatial applications. Since the 1970s, dozens of formats have been created based on various data models for various purposes. They have been created by government mapping agencies, GIS software vendors, standards bodies such as the Open Geospatial Consortium, informal user communities, and even individual developers.
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.
Manifold System is a geographic information system (GIS) software package developed by Manifold Software Limited that runs on Microsoft Windows. Manifold System handles both vector and raster data, includes spatial SQL, a built-in Internet Map Server (IMS), and other general GIS features.
ArcSDE is a server-software sub-system that aims to enable the usage of Relational Database Management Systems for spatial data. The spatial data may then be used as part of a geodatabase.
Java Unified Mapping Program (JUMP) is a Java based vector and raster GIS and programming framework. Current development continues under the OpenJUMP name.
gvSIG, geographic information system (GIS), is a desktop application designed for capturing, storing, handling, analyzing and deploying any kind of referenced geographic information in order to solve complex management and planning problems. gvSIG is known for having a user-friendly interface, being able to access the most common formats, both vector and raster ones. It features a wide range of tools for working with geographic-like information.
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.
QGIS, also known as Quantum GIS, is a geographic information system (GIS) software that is free and open-source. QGIS supports Windows, macOS, and Linux. It supports viewing, editing, printing, and analysis of geospatial data.
Kosmo is a desktop geographic information system (GIS) with advanced functions. It is the first of a series of developments that are being made available to the community.
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 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.
Oracle Spatial and Graph, formerly Oracle Spatial, is a free option component of the Oracle Database. The spatial features in Oracle Spatial and Graph aid users in managing geographic and location-data in a native type within an Oracle database, potentially supporting a wide range of applications — from automated mapping, facilities management, and geographic information systems (AM/FM/GIS), to wireless location services and location-enabled e-business. The graph features in Oracle Spatial and Graph include Oracle Network Data Model (NDM) graphs used in traditional network applications in major transportation, telcos, utilities and energy organizations and RDF semantic graphs used in social networks and social interactions and in linking disparate data sets to address requirements from the research, health sciences, finance, media and intelligence communities.
ArcGIS Server is the core server geographic information system (GIS) software made by Esri. ArcGIS Server is used for creating and managing GIS Web services, applications, and data. ArcGIS Server is typically deployed on-premises within the organization’s service-oriented architecture (SOA) or off-premises in a cloud computing environment.
An object-based spatial database is a spatial database that stores the location as objects. The object-based spatial model treats the world as surface littered with recognizable objects, which exist independent of their locations.
SPRING was a freeware geographic information system (GIS) and remote sensing image processing system. It was developed with an object-oriented data model and used for the integration of raster and vector data representations. It had Windows and Linux versions and provided a comprehensive set of functions, including tools for satellite image, digital terrain modeling, spatial analysis, geostatistics and spatial statistics, spatial databases and map management.
A geographic data model, geospatial data model, or simply data model in the context of geographic information systems, is a mathematical and digital structure for representing phenomena over the Earth. Generally, such data models represent various aspects of these phenomena by means of geographic data, including spatial locations, attributes, change over time, and identity. For example, the vector data model represents geography as collections of points, lines, and polygons, and the raster data model represent geography as cell matrices that store numeric values. Data models are implemented throughout the GIS ecosystem, including the software tools for data management and spatial analysis, data stored in a variety of GIS file formats, specifications and standards, and specific designs for GIS installations.
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.
An array database management system or array DBMS provides database services specifically for arrays, that is: homogeneous collections of data items, sitting on a regular grid of one, two, or more dimensions. Often arrays are used to represent sensor, simulation, image, or statistics data. Such arrays tend to be Big Data, with single objects frequently ranging into Terabyte and soon Petabyte sizes; for example, today's earth and space observation archives typically grow by Terabytes a day. Array databases aim at offering flexible, scalable storage and retrieval on this information category.
