Put common sample data on the DVD/VM

[shansen]

So far most projects provide their own sample data. this is probably the easiest option, but also wastes space, which is limited. Instead all projects should use a common data set and base their examples on that.

[hamish]

We might split this down into 3 sections

• A PostGIS spatial database with all sorts of goodies
• A collection of GeoTIFFs and Shapefiles (N.Carolina dataset)
• Webtiles: maybe these are better created on-the-fly from the above two?

NC sample dataset: ​http://www.grassbook.org/data_menu3rd.php scroll down for "common GIS formats"

see also the OSGeo geodata mailing list.

Hamish

[darkblueb]

I have built a geonames database, albeit a non-standard one.. 83,000 POINTs in Spain. Its about 20mb. The main table is drawn from a view with some hand made JOINs.. the foreign keys are tricky and there appear to be a lot of exceptions, so its not easy to built the whole thing in some formal way.. geonames on the whole is far too large to consider.. I looked at the web services, and they seem at first glance to be too specific to generate general purpose examples with...

The natural earth set scripting seems to be coming along. There is alot there.. I have to admit at this late I dont have a firm handle on what should be live in PG or not..

World Protected Areas (WDPA.org) is a good set... not sure what permissions we would need to get to include..

[hamish]

natural earth data now installed by ./install_gisdata.sh and a number of things have started to use it. in addition the host city's .osm.bz file is now saved in a PostGIS database called osm_local (thanks Brian).

[darkblueb]

the Natural Earth vectors, when loaded into PostGIS, are about 12MB but they are not very interesting to demo PostGIS with...