PostGIS has received a nice overview write-up in the PostgreSQL online journal. Money-quote:

“There is perhaps nothing more powerful in the geospatial world than the succinct expressiveness of SQL married with spatial operators and functions.”

The 1.3.2 release of PostGIS is now available. This release includes bug fixes and some minor feature enhancements.

• Improvements in the TIGER geocoder
• Fix to ST_EndPoint() crasher bug
• Modified ST_AsGML() improving v2 and adding v3 support
• Fix to ensure ST_Envelope() returns valid geometries
• Change JDBC build to use Ant
• Fix for better OS/X support
• Fix to WKB parser to do simple validity checks

The 1.3.1 release of PostGIS is now available. This release introduces new functionality, as well as various performance enhancments.

• Began migration of functions to the SQL-MM naming convension; using the spatial type (SP) prefix.
• Created cached and indexd point-in-polygon short-circuits for the functions ST_Contains, ST_Intersects, ST_Within and ST_Disjoint.
• Added inline index support for relational functions.
• Extended curve geometry support to geometry accessor and some processing functions.
• Added Hibernate Dialect

The FOSS4G2007 Call for Workshops is open! FOSS4G is a great place to learn about how people are using PostGIS and other open source software to get their work done. Or to teach people the cool techniques you use.

• Paul Ramsey has submitted his "Introduction to PostGIS" workshop.
• Do you have a PostGIS-themed workshop idea?

Submit your workshop idea, or make plans to come to FOSS4G and attend! September 24-27, 2007 in Victoria, British Columbia.

The 1.1.7 release of PostGIS is now available. This is a bug fix release, backporting improvements from the 1.2.x series to the 1.1.x series.

• Fix for detection of GEOS versions.
• Fix for better cross platform support.
• Fix for JDBC compatibility with PostgreSQL 8.2.
• Fix for GCJ Java support.
• Fix for GiST index support with PostgreSQL 8.2.

The 1.2.1 release of PostGIS is now available. This is a minor bug fix release.

• Fix for bug in Within() caused by point-in-polygon performance shortcut.
• Fix for bug in indexes with null on PostgreSQL 8.2.
• Fix for JTS handling of multi-dimensional data.
• Fix for GCJ Java support.
• Fix for JDBC compatibility in PostgreSQL 8.2.
• New AsKML() function.
• Better Transform() performance when no transform is actually required!

The 1.2.0 release of PostGIS is now available. This is a major new feature release, with the first PostGIS support for "curve" types, and initial support for the ISO SQL/MM suite of spatial database functions. Over time, the 1.2.X series will elabourate on the basic support provided in this release:

• New Curve type, based on the ISO SQL/MM model for curves.
• Index binding for curves, allowing them to use the same R-Tree indexes as the other types.
• Serialization and deserialization functions for Curve, allowing them to be dumped and restored.
• Performance shortcuts for Contains and Within to optimize point-in-polygon case.
• Support for most of the ST_* and SE_* spatial SQL functions used by the ESRI ArcSDE spatial SQL interfaces.
• Documentation of the new SQL/MM functions and Curve types.

The 1.1.6 maintenance release of PostGIS is now available. This is a minor bugfix and compatibility release. The following changes have occurred:

• Fixed CAPI change that broke 64-bit platforms.
• Added Z ordinate to reprojections.
• Updated spatial_ref_sys.sql updated to EPSG 6.11.1.
• Simplified Version.config infrastructure to use a single pack of version variables for everything.
• Included the Version.config in loader/dumper USAGE messages.
• Replaced hand-made, fragile JDBC version parser with Properties.
• Fixed setSRID() bug in JDBC, thanks to Thomas Marti.
• Fixed regression tests and usage output in loader/dumper.

In the latest entry of our collection of case studies, read about how the EU Joint Research Centre is using billion dollar radar satellites and PostGIS to monitor fishing vessels in the North Atlantic and provide real-time reporting and mapping to decision makers and fisheries regulators.

In the latest entry of our collection of case studies, read about how Infoterra, a leading European satellite and aerial imagery provider, runs their data provision and sales systems on PostGIS, and stores the complete Ordnance Survey database (over 500M features!) on PostGIS.