PostgreSQL and OpenStreetMap

The Postgres User Group Belgium is happy to announce another speaker from PgConf Europe. This time, Sarah Hoffman, software developer at OpenStreetMap, active member of that project since 2008, will bring us:

"Inside the machine room of a world map: PostgreSQL and OpenStreetMap"

The OpenStreetMap (OSM) project is a community project to collect map data of the whole world. Started in 2007 as a small mapping project in the UK, it has become one of the most important providers of geodata. Its database has grown to almost 9 billion objects. OSM has very early on chosen PostgreSQL for the core database of the project and the combination of PostgreSQL and PostGIS turned out to be a perfect match for OSM data users. Nowadays it is hard to avoid PostgreSQL when working with OSM data.

This is the story of how OSM was able to grow into a huge global geo database with the help of the ever maturing PostgreSQL project. The talk will explore three core pieces of software for OSM: the main OSM database, the database loader osm2pgsql and the geocoder Nominatim. We look into how these projects make use of PostgreSQL and how their usage patterns have changed over time. There will be anecdotes of moments where PostgreSQL was at its best and other moments where we found out about its limits.

You can find Sarah's interview for PgConf Europe on the following link:
https://2022.pgconf.eu/speaker-interviews/sarah-hoffmann/

This meetup will be once again online, via Zoom. If you want to help us host an in-person meetup, please reach out.

The Zoom link will be provided soon.