4 ms·

Heroku Postgres - GIS Support Now Available

74 points by Lightning 13y ago

craigkerstiens 13y ago
Here's the more details announcement post which contains more detail around technical benefits - https://postgres.heroku.com/blog/past/2013/4/30/building_location_based_apps_with_postgis/ https://postgres.heroku.com/blog/past/2013/4/30/building_loc...
salman89 13y ago
I have found a general lack of hosted PostGIS solutions and would have loved if this was around 6 months ago. Cartodb felt more like a mapping solution than a spatial database solution. SpacialDB (https://spacialdb.com/ https://spacialdb.com/) was the only thing I could find, but their pricing plans vs storage limits didn't make sense (I was loading up OSM data - full dataset is really big). Ended up installing PostGIS on an EC2 instance manually, worked OK for development purposes but I would have never felt comfortable pushing that into production.
niels 13y ago
Wow, We were one day from migrating away from Heroku because of this exact issue. I even made a custom Postgis build for dotcloud that also has extensions such as HStore. https://github.com/resmio/postgresql-on-dotcloud https://github.com/resmio/postgresql-on-dotcloud. Guess we have time to reconsider now.
bratsche 13y ago
Very nice! Their documentation on using it with Rails isn't very useful, but at least it points users to the right gem to install and use so they can read more about it on that github page.
- craigkerstiens 13y ago
  Product manager for Heroku Postgres here, we've added a direct link to the gem docs. In general our hopes weren't to recycle the already good documentation out there, but reference it as that provides the right guide for actually taking advantage of functionality.
scdoshi 13y ago
Awesome. We've been waiting for this for a while.
annymsMthd 13y ago
I was using PostGIS for vehicle tracking at my last job. PostGIS made it really simple by allowing me to boil everything down to simple geometry. The performance is amazing. The CTO told me I was doing it wrong and I should be using some homebrew solution in the middle tier that would do a comparison of 2,000+ points each GPS update. Why reinvent the wheel? Let the experts handle the geospatial functions.
csmatt 13y ago
Wow, I was just recently looking for an alternative to Heroku because I noticed my GeoDjango app with PostGIS wouldn't run on it. Very good timing!
255martyn 13y ago
Is it possible to use this independently of other heroku services? We're on ec2, but this is a perfect fit. Edit: If this is up to date https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/dynos https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/dynos Then heroku uses ec2, so it should be possible.
- craigkerstiens 13y ago
  Absolutely Heroku Postgres runs on top of EC2, if you want more details or have any questions you can reach out to me directly craig at heroku.com
- plasma 13y ago
  Yes, https://postgres.heroku.com/ https://postgres.heroku.com/ its a stand-alone service (thats run by Heroku), you don't need to be on the Heroku platform to use it.
pselbert 13y ago
PostGIS has been available on Heroku for a little while now, you just had to be using a Ronin ($200/mo) plan or above. We were just about to roll out some geo-location features and were caught by this. To stage the new features we were forced to upgrade the staging database to Ronin level, which is absolute overkill. I'll be pleased to knock that back down a few levels.

74 points by Lightning 13y ago

Here's the more details announcement post which contains more detail around technical benefits - https://postgres.heroku.com/blog/past/2013/4/30/building_location_based_apps_with_postgis/ https://postgres.heroku.com/blog/past/2013/4/30/building_loc...

salman89 13y ago

I have found a general lack of hosted PostGIS solutions and would have loved if this was around 6 months ago. Cartodb felt more like a mapping solution than a spatial database solution. SpacialDB (https://spacialdb.com/ https://spacialdb.com/) was the only thing I could find, but their pricing plans vs storage limits didn't make sense (I was loading up OSM data - full dataset is really big). Ended up installing PostGIS on an EC2 instance manually, worked OK for development purposes but I would have never felt comfortable pushing that into production.

niels 13y ago

Wow, We were one day from migrating away from Heroku because of this exact issue. I even made a custom Postgis build for dotcloud that also has extensions such as HStore. https://github.com/resmio/postgresql-on-dotcloud https://github.com/resmio/postgresql-on-dotcloud. Guess we have time to reconsider now.

bratsche 13y ago

Very nice! Their documentation on using it with Rails isn't very useful, but at least it points users to the right gem to install and use so they can read more about it on that github page.

craigkerstiens 13y ago
Product manager for Heroku Postgres here, we've added a direct link to the gem docs. In general our hopes weren't to recycle the already good documentation out there, but reference it as that provides the right guide for actually taking advantage of functionality.

scdoshi 13y ago

Awesome. We've been waiting for this for a while.

annymsMthd 13y ago

I was using PostGIS for vehicle tracking at my last job. PostGIS made it really simple by allowing me to boil everything down to simple geometry. The performance is amazing. The CTO told me I was doing it wrong and I should be using some homebrew solution in the middle tier that would do a comparison of 2,000+ points each GPS update. Why reinvent the wheel? Let the experts handle the geospatial functions.

csmatt 13y ago

Wow, I was just recently looking for an alternative to Heroku because I noticed my GeoDjango app with PostGIS wouldn't run on it. Very good timing!

255martyn 13y ago

Is it possible to use this independently of other heroku services? We're on ec2, but this is a perfect fit. Edit: If this is up to date https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/dynos https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/dynos Then heroku uses ec2, so it should be possible.

craigkerstiens 13y ago
Absolutely Heroku Postgres runs on top of EC2, if you want more details or have any questions you can reach out to me directly craig at heroku.com
plasma 13y ago
Yes, https://postgres.heroku.com/ https://postgres.heroku.com/ its a stand-alone service (thats run by Heroku), you don't need to be on the Heroku platform to use it.

pselbert 13y ago

PostGIS has been available on Heroku for a little while now, you just had to be using a Ronin ($200/mo) plan or above. We were just about to roll out some geo-location features and were caught by this. To stage the new features we were forced to upgrade the staging database to Ronin level, which is absolute overkill. I'll be pleased to knock that back down a few levels.