PDXPUG's next meeting is this Thursday!

Topic: PostGIS and Census Data
Speaker: Webb Sprague
Location: FreeGeek, 1731 SE 10th Avenue, Portland, OR
Date/time: 7/16/09, 7pm

Webb Sprague will be speaking about PostGIS and the Census Data at the next PDXPUG meeting at FreeGeek (at 7:00pm - 1731 SE 10th Avenue, Portland, OR).

Looking forward to seeing everyone there....and of course, drinks at the Lucky Lab (http://www.luckylab.com/) at 915 SE Hawthorne Blvd. afterward.

From Webb:
If anyone is wondering about specifics, I will describe how I recently created a "crosswalk" table that correlates census tracts in 1980 with census tracts in 2000 in the Portland region (well, Washington, Multnomah, and Clackamas counties), so that we could see poverty trends over the last 25 years.

I used PostGIS, Census naming conventions ("FIPS codes"), and lots of outer joins. So if you like that sort of thing, I would love to hear your comments tomorrow!

A rather late recap of the last SydPUG meeting: Mark Leslie, software architect with LISAsoft, gave a very informative presentation on the history and capabilities of PostGIS. A lively question and answer session ensued. Mark's slides from the meeting are attached.

Thanks very much to everyone who came to the meeting.

Speakers have been enlisted for the next SydPUG, which is (at this time) scheduled to run in early April.

Charles

Topic for Consideration:
Matthew Wetmore from Secom International, will be hosting April's LAPUG meeting. Rather than attending a discussion, Matthew has prepared the facilities for all of us to get some hands on experience tuning some of the rarely used albeit important tuning parameters of PostgreSQL. This will be an experience that all of us can benefit from!

Preparatory Home Work:
Everyone that has had an opportunity to administer or create a PostgreSQL server is encouraged to bring their copy of the postgresql.conf file. We would like to center discussions around the changes that were made to this file from the original. Also we would like to discuss the impetus as to why the changes were made in the first place.

Also, two weeks (or so) before the LAPUG meeting, submit your postgresql.conf file to the LAPUG mailing list. If time allows, Matthew will drop the conf into a live system to produce daily pg_stats to see if the changes made any notable differences in overall performance prior to the meeting.

Time:
April 25, 7:00 pm

Location:
Secom International, Inc
9610 Bellanca, Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90045

Map:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=9610+Bellanca,+Ave.+Los...

Taking a head count:
Feel free to invite anyone that may be interested in coming to a PUG meeting. For those that are planning to attend please send an email to the LAPUG mailing list. (If food can be provided, it will help to know how much to bring.)

Job Postings:
http://pugs.postgresql.org/node/385

March's LAPUG Recap:
The LAPUG March meeting evolved in to a "Round Table" discussion. Each person shared very interesting experiences in how PostgreSQL was used in the development and use of sophisticated software applications. Some of these applications were for storing sound files, storing images, and other where developed as engineering tools.

The discussion also involved to uses of advanced data models such as: PostgreSQL's GIS extension, Temporal Database design, Generalization Hierarchies, Natural Keys versus Surrogate Keys, useful ways Graph Theory can be implemented into table designs to model network archtechtures. Just from this discussion alone, we have several very interesting topics that could be presented at a future LAPUG meeting.

Plans were also hatch to contact local universities and colleges to draw interest from local student and professors. Moo is taking the lead in the month of April to contact local schools in time for April's LAPUG "Hand's On" meeting.

Joining the LAPUG mailing list: http://mail.postgresql.org/mj/mj_wwwusr?domain=postgresql.org&func=lists...

LAPUG Meeting Schedule: http://pugs.postgresql.org/node/379