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I work on geospatial apps and the software I think I am most excited about is https://felt.com/ https://felt.com/. I want to see them expand their tooling such

I work on geospatial apps and the software I think I am most excited about is https://felt.com/ https://felt.com/. I want to see them expand their tooling such that maps and data source authentication/authorization was controllable by the developer, to enable tenant isolation with proprietary data access. They could really disrupt how geospatial tech gets integrated into consumer apps. This article doesn't acknowledge how niche this stuff is and it's a lot of training to get people to up to speed on coordinate systems, projections, transformations, etc. I would replace a lot of my custom built mapping tools with Felt if it were possible, so I could focus on our core geospatial processes and not the code to display and play with it in the browser, which is almost as big if not bigger in terms of LOC to maintain. As mentioned by another commenter, this DuckDB DX as described is basically the same as PostGIS too.

dbreunig 1y ago
Author here: the beauty of DuckDB spatial is that the projections and CRS options are hidden until you need them. For 90% of geospatial data usage people don't and shouldn't need to know about projections or CRS. Yes, there are so many great tools to handle the complexity for the capital-G Geospatial work. I love Felt too! Sam and team have built a great platform. But lots of times a map isn't needed; an analyst just needs it as a column. PostGIS is also excellent! But having to start up a database server to work with data doesn't lend itself to casual usage. The beauty of DuckDB is that it's there in a moment and in reach for data generalists.
- jparishy 1y ago
  I think we're mostly making the same point about complexity, ya. To me, I think it's mostly a frontend problem stopping the spread of mapping in consumer apps. Backend geo is easy tbh. There is so much good, free tooling. Mapping frontend is hell and there is no good off the shelf solution I've seen. Some too low level, some too high level. I think we need a GIS-lite that is embeddable to hide the complexity and let app developers focus on their value add, and not paying the tax of having frontend developers fix endless issues with maps they don't understand. edit: to clarify, I think there's a relationship between getting mapping valued by leadership such that the geo work can be even be done by analysts, and having more mapping tools exist in frontend apps such that those leaders see them and understand why geo matters. it needs to be more than just markers on the map, with broad exposure. hence my focus on frontend web. sorry if that felt disjointed
  - dbreunig 1y ago
    Not disjointed at all. That last topic is the big challenge to solve.
- korkoros 1y ago
  My experience has been that data generalists should stay away from geospatial analysis precisely because they lack a full appreciation of the importance of spatial references. I've seen people fail at this task in so many ways. From "I don't need a library to reproject, I'll just use a haversine function" to "I'll just do a spatial join of these address points in WGS84 to these parcels in NAD27" to "these North Korean missiles aren't a threat because according to this map using a Mercator projection, we are out of range." DuckDB is great, but the fact that it makes it easier for data generalists to make mistakes with geospatial data is mark against it, not in its favor.
  - groggo 1y ago
    I remember learning about the infamous missile threat map in a GIS class - https://georeferenced.wordpress.com/2014/05/22/worldmapblunders/ https://georeferenced.wordpress.com/2014/05/22/worldmapblund... https://www.economist.com/asia/2003/05/15/correction-north-koreas-missiles https://www.economist.com/asia/2003/05/15/correction-north-k...
- febed 1y ago
  Last I checked DuckDB spatial didn’t support handling projections. It couldn’t load the CRS from a .prj file. This makes it useless for serious geospatial stuff.
jandrewrogers 1y ago
> it's a lot of training to get people to up to speed on coordinate systems, projections, transformations, etc This can mostly be avoided entirely with a proper spheroidal reference system, computational geometry implementation, and indexing. Most uses of geospatial analytics are not cartographic in nature. The map is at best a presentation layer, it is not the data model, and some don’t use a map at all. Forcing people to learn obscure and esoteric cartographic systems to ask simple intuitive questions about geospatial relationships is a big part of the problem. There is no reason this needs to be part of the learning curve. I’ve run experiments on unsophisticated users a few times with respect to this. If you give them a fully spheroidal WGS84 implementation for geospatial analytics, it mostly “just works” for them anywhere on the globe and without regard for geospatial extent. Yes, the software implementation is much less trivial but it is qualitatively superior UX because “the world” kind of behaves how people intuit it should without having to know anything about projections, transforms, etc. And to be honest, even if you do know about projections and transforms, the results are still often less than optimal. The only issue that comes up is that a lot of cartographic visualization toolkits are somewhat broken if you have global data models or a lot of complex geometry. Lots of rendering artifacts. Something else to work on I guess.
- maxxen 1y ago
  Im inclined to agree, but unfortunately a huge amount of the existing data and processes in this space does not assume a spheroidal earth and come provided with a coordinate reference system. Ultimately there are also some domains where you got data that you explicitly don't want to interpret using spheroidal semantics, e.g. when working with a city plan - in which case the map _is_ the data model, and you definitely want the angles of a triangle to sum up to 180.
  - jparishy 1y ago
    Similarly I see it as it an inevitable that you will deal with a problem related to these issues, then have a massive blocker if you aren't already familiar with the details because debugging requires more than a cursory understanding for hard problems. In the alternative, you don't know the problems exist and the code is broken. I don't think it's as simple as abstracting away the entire concept, which is what I would say is too high level like I mentioned above. I don't know the right answer here honestly, I think it will be disruptive when someone figures it out
stevage 1y ago
I was just about to get into Felt then they took away the free tier and made it very expensive.
- mtmail 1y ago
  https://atlas.co/ https://atlas.co/ still has a free tier. Less features I think, depends on your use case of course.
- lugarlugarlugar 1y ago
  [dead]
kashifr 1y ago
Have you tried https://geobase.app/ https://geobase.app/ they recently also had a post about duckdb integration: https://geobase.app/blog/duckdb-1-1-3 https://geobase.app/blog/duckdb-1-1-3
- jparishy 1y ago
  I had not, looks pretty cool but solves the inverse of the problem as I see it. I want a backend agnostic frontend toolset that is a GIS that I can customize to my needs. I don't want to implement the tools myself, that's too low level. I don't want the service to manage, control, or own the data, that's too high level. There's a sweet spot I don't think is being hit yet.
fastasucan 1y ago
>As mentioned by another commenter, this DuckDB DX as described is basically the same as PostGIS too. No, its not.

dbreunig 1y ago

Author here: the beauty of DuckDB spatial is that the projections and CRS options are hidden until you need them. For 90% of geospatial data usage people don't and shouldn't need to know about projections or CRS. Yes, there are so many great tools to handle the complexity for the capital-G Geospatial work. I love Felt too! Sam and team have built a great platform. But lots of times a map isn't needed; an analyst just needs it as a column. PostGIS is also excellent! But having to start up a database server to work with data doesn't lend itself to casual usage. The beauty of DuckDB is that it's there in a moment and in reach for data generalists.

jparishy 1y ago
I think we're mostly making the same point about complexity, ya. To me, I think it's mostly a frontend problem stopping the spread of mapping in consumer apps. Backend geo is easy tbh. There is so much good, free tooling. Mapping frontend is hell and there is no good off the shelf solution I've seen. Some too low level, some too high level. I think we need a GIS-lite that is embeddable to hide the complexity and let app developers focus on their value add, and not paying the tax of having frontend developers fix endless issues with maps they don't understand. edit: to clarify, I think there's a relationship between getting mapping valued by leadership such that the geo work can be even be done by analysts, and having more mapping tools exist in frontend apps such that those leaders see them and understand why geo matters. it needs to be more than just markers on the map, with broad exposure. hence my focus on frontend web. sorry if that felt disjointed
- dbreunig 1y ago
  Not disjointed at all. That last topic is the big challenge to solve.
korkoros 1y ago
My experience has been that data generalists should stay away from geospatial analysis precisely because they lack a full appreciation of the importance of spatial references. I've seen people fail at this task in so many ways. From "I don't need a library to reproject, I'll just use a haversine function" to "I'll just do a spatial join of these address points in WGS84 to these parcels in NAD27" to "these North Korean missiles aren't a threat because according to this map using a Mercator projection, we are out of range." DuckDB is great, but the fact that it makes it easier for data generalists to make mistakes with geospatial data is mark against it, not in its favor.
- groggo 1y ago
  I remember learning about the infamous missile threat map in a GIS class - https://georeferenced.wordpress.com/2014/05/22/worldmapblunders/ https://georeferenced.wordpress.com/2014/05/22/worldmapblund... https://www.economist.com/asia/2003/05/15/correction-north-koreas-missiles https://www.economist.com/asia/2003/05/15/correction-north-k...
febed 1y ago
Last I checked DuckDB spatial didn’t support handling projections. It couldn’t load the CRS from a .prj file. This makes it useless for serious geospatial stuff.

jandrewrogers 1y ago

> it's a lot of training to get people to up to speed on coordinate systems, projections, transformations, etc This can mostly be avoided entirely with a proper spheroidal reference system, computational geometry implementation, and indexing. Most uses of geospatial analytics are not cartographic in nature. The map is at best a presentation layer, it is not the data model, and some don’t use a map at all. Forcing people to learn obscure and esoteric cartographic systems to ask simple intuitive questions about geospatial relationships is a big part of the problem. There is no reason this needs to be part of the learning curve. I’ve run experiments on unsophisticated users a few times with respect to this. If you give them a fully spheroidal WGS84 implementation for geospatial analytics, it mostly “just works” for them anywhere on the globe and without regard for geospatial extent. Yes, the software implementation is much less trivial but it is qualitatively superior UX because “the world” kind of behaves how people intuit it should without having to know anything about projections, transforms, etc. And to be honest, even if you do know about projections and transforms, the results are still often less than optimal. The only issue that comes up is that a lot of cartographic visualization toolkits are somewhat broken if you have global data models or a lot of complex geometry. Lots of rendering artifacts. Something else to work on I guess.

maxxen 1y ago
Im inclined to agree, but unfortunately a huge amount of the existing data and processes in this space does not assume a spheroidal earth and come provided with a coordinate reference system. Ultimately there are also some domains where you got data that you explicitly don't want to interpret using spheroidal semantics, e.g. when working with a city plan - in which case the map _is_ the data model, and you definitely want the angles of a triangle to sum up to 180.
- jparishy 1y ago
  Similarly I see it as it an inevitable that you will deal with a problem related to these issues, then have a massive blocker if you aren't already familiar with the details because debugging requires more than a cursory understanding for hard problems. In the alternative, you don't know the problems exist and the code is broken. I don't think it's as simple as abstracting away the entire concept, which is what I would say is too high level like I mentioned above. I don't know the right answer here honestly, I think it will be disruptive when someone figures it out

stevage 1y ago

I was just about to get into Felt then they took away the free tier and made it very expensive.

mtmail 1y ago
https://atlas.co/ https://atlas.co/ still has a free tier. Less features I think, depends on your use case of course.
lugarlugarlugar 1y ago
[dead]

kashifr 1y ago

Have you tried https://geobase.app/ https://geobase.app/ they recently also had a post about duckdb integration: https://geobase.app/blog/duckdb-1-1-3 https://geobase.app/blog/duckdb-1-1-3

jparishy 1y ago
I had not, looks pretty cool but solves the inverse of the problem as I see it. I want a backend agnostic frontend toolset that is a GIS that I can customize to my needs. I don't want to implement the tools myself, that's too low level. I don't want the service to manage, control, or own the data, that's too high level. There's a sweet spot I don't think is being hit yet.

fastasucan 1y ago

>As mentioned by another commenter, this DuckDB DX as described is basically the same as PostGIS too. No, its not.