MySQL for Geospatial Applications

Build your own multi-user enterprise GIS for free

This course is intended to provide an introduction to spatial databases in general and MySQL in particular to GIS professionals who are interested in expanding their skillset to multi-user enterprise level spatial databases. MySQL is available on almost all web-hosting platforms and geospatial capabilities have been part of the core MySQL distribution since version 5.6.  This means that is far easier and less expensive to setup and deploy a spatial database with MySQL than other options such as PostGIS. At this point it does not have all the bells and whistles that PostGIS has but all of the important core functionality is there. This course uses the latest (as of 11/22) versions of MySQL (8.0, and QGIS (3.28). I believe it is the most current and thorough course on spatial databases available today. You will learn

• What a spatial database is and why you would want to use one.

• What SQL is, why you would want to use it, and how it can be applied to geospatial concepts.

• How to install MySQL locally for development purposes and how to access a production version via a network or the internet.

• How to load your spatial data into MySQL and access it from a variety of clients, especially QGIS

• The basics of SQL for both spatial and non-spatial queries

• How to validate data and control user access with the tools built-in to MySQL

• Optimizing your queries for the best performance

• The basics of programming custom functions with the MySQL stored procedure language

• The basics of database administration to keep your database operating smoothly

• Deploy your database on a web'hosting service so that it is available to anyone with an internet connection (assuming they have been granted access priveleges)