1

I work in an office of 10 people. We all use QGIS. I also use ArcGIS.

Currently all our GIS data are stored (thus duplicated) on everyone's induvidual hard drives. Any major updates I make are copied over manually from my machine to theirs.

We want to move to having the data in a single location. I thought that by installing PostgresSQL with PostGIS on my machine, and importing the data using pgAdmin, I'd be able to access the same data on my colleague's machine. However, I can only connect to the database (in QGIS) on my machine.

My question is: how can I share my PostGIS database with others in my office?

Vince
  • 20,017
  • 15
  • 45
  • 64
Theo F
  • 1,817
  • 12
  • 34
  • We had a similar situation in our office a few years back. We installed PostgresSQL on a server (mac mini with macOS server) and all 5 team members had own (limited) user rights (defined within pgAdmin (that programm serves as GUI for the server) and so were able to access the DBs through QGIS. It worked pretty well. I did not install it myself, therefor I can't provide a step by step guide and therefor only comment and not answer your question! – Kevkev770 Feb 07 '18 at 15:44
  • 4
    This is a basic PostgreSQL administration issue. By default, PG only allows minimal privileges, so you need to configure it to allow network access from your colleagues. You should create login roles for each user and a group role to grant access, as any book on database administration will recommend. – Vince Feb 07 '18 at 15:48
  • 1
    Whoever deals with your network should be able to sort out the details of that side of things. But then you will need to set up a user group and roles in the database. See https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/232945/how-do-i-setup-a-postgis-database-and-open-it-in-qgis-on-windows/233024#233024 this has details of some of the steps – Martin Hügi Feb 07 '18 at 15:48
  • @MartinHügi FYI, we currently use Dropbox as our 'network' for file sharing. We do not have an internal server as such. We also don't have anyone who deals with our network anyway (we have no IT professional). I'm doing this by myself with limited knowledge of network infrastructure. :( – Theo F Feb 07 '18 at 16:27
  • @Vince thanks. 'you need to configure it to allow network access from your colleagues': this is the part I need to learn how to do. I will read through the link Martin posted and see if that gets me anywhere. – Theo F Feb 07 '18 at 16:29
  • Most likley the cheapest way without having a server setup is to have AWS RDS https://aws.amazon.com/rds/postgresql/ you can setup your users and they can all login into the same database. – Mapperz Feb 07 '18 at 19:38
  • 1
    By default, Postgres does not accept connections from other machines. To change this you need to update two configuration files: pg_hba.conf and postgresql.conf. See https://www.thegeekstuff.com/2014/02/enable-remote-postgresql-connection/?utm_source=tuicool – dbaston Feb 07 '18 at 20:38
  • Yes, agree with @Mapperz, we use an AWS RDS server – Martin Hügi Feb 08 '18 at 09:12
  • Given that your computers are actually on the same network and can see each other, the postgresql network configuration issue identified by dbaston is likely the problem you are having. – chodgson Feb 08 '18 at 17:33
  • @chodgson we're on the same wifi network, not on a LAN. We can't see each other. Sorry I should have been clearer. – Theo F Feb 09 '18 at 09:33

0 Answers0