[REFERENCE] Workflows for accessing GuardianConnector data in QGIS (or other GIS software) #3
Description
https://github.com/ConservationMetrics/gc-forge/issues/72 will likely mean (unless I’m mistaken) that it will not be possible to load data from Postgres directly into QGIS. From what I’ve seen, the only straightforward way to do this—short of deploying something like GeoServer to sit between Postgres and QGIS—is to make a direct database connection. This would require exposing the database externally.
However, thinking about this today, I'm thinking that this may not be the right workflow for our users in the first place.
It seems that many of the Postgres-in-QGIS workflows (e.g., https://forrest.nyc/postgis-and-qgis-in-4-minutes/) rely heavily on writing SQL queries to do anything meaningful with the data. I'm sure that the ability to do this is quite powerful for GIS power users. It's why a GIS influencer like Matt Forest considers SQL to be one of the most important GIS tools to learn today. But I highly doubt any of our users, or even their NGO ally support organizations, will know how to do write SQL, or have the background or capacity to learn to do so.
What our users do know how to do is open files on their computer using QGIS. That’s the workflow they’re familiar with. And we can make it possible (e.g. through Windmill and Filebrowser) for them to download their spatial data in GeoJSON or another format.
Another upshot of doing this is that we treat the data warehouse as read-only, simplifying our permission model and ensuring the integrity of the upstream data. Users get access to clean, exportable files they can confidently work with in QGIS, without needing to worry about accidentally modifying the source data.
So, maybe we solve this issue through documentation of a workflow by which you can download spatial data from GuardianConnector and open it in QGIS (or for that matter, ArcGIS).
Original issue (with more preliminary discussion) here: https://github.com/ConservationMetrics/gc-programs/issues/34