PostGIS 1.4 out soon
PostGIS 1.4 will be out soon, which will be good because it feels like forever we've had this release baking in the oven. The key changes are as follows:
Which many are detailed in New in PostGIS 1.4
- ST_IsValidReason() -- requires GEOS 3.1 -- will tell you why a geometry is not valid. Its a complement to ST_IsValid() which has existed for as long as I can remember
- Improvements in all the aggregate functions ST_Collect, ST_Union, ST_Accum to use new array logic that can better handle collecting of many geometries. You won't notice this benefit much until you start collecting and unioning 1000s of geometries
- Name change of hidden st*garray functions to be exposed as ST_Collect(geometry[]), ST_Union(geometry[]) ..etc
- Cascade Aggregate Union -- requires GEOS 3.1 -- need I say more?
- Prepared geometry - required GEOS 3.1
- Better debugging facilities and cleaner code base
Sadly ST_DumpPoints did not make it into 1.4, and we seem to have jumped to 2.0 thinking. Where is 1.5? 2.0 seems offly ambitious (geodetic, better 3d, WKT Raster, restructure to allow support for more types, improved curve)
that I feel we really need at least a 1.5 to
cushion the path. There are a lot of things we have left on the plate such as ST_DumpPoints, Steve Frost's Tiger Geocoder upgrade for new tiger 2007/2008 format,
minor enhancements to distance speed and functionality and dumper
that don't require major restructure that I feel those should just come first and that need only be a 3-6 month incubation. Given our new policy of not introducing new functions in minor releases, it would seem almost necessary to have at least a 1.5
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