PostGIS SQL Dump
Open BetaPostGIS SQL is a text SQL script that creates a table with a geometry column and fills it with data, ready to load into any PostgreSQL database with the PostGIS extension. It is a convenient way to hand an OSM selection to a team already on the PostgreSQL stack: apply the script and you immediately have a geometry table for queries through ST_* functions. Our exporter generates a self-contained .sql: CREATE TABLE with a geom column and attributes, then one INSERT per feature where geometry is given via ST_GeomFromText(WKT, SRID) (SRID 4326 by default). Multiple layers become separate tables, and values are escaped (SQL-injection safe). Honestly: this is a simple human-readable dump via ST_GeomFromText, not a binary pg_dump archive and not the full osm2pgsql schema with planet_osm tables and spatial indexes.
Key Features
About PostGIS SQL Format
PostGIS SQL is not a binary dump but an ordinary text script: create a table with a geometry column and fill it with rows. It can be read by eye, put into version control and applied with a single psql command on any PostgreSQL database with the PostGIS extension.
The format is convenient when data is handed to a team already living on PostgreSQL: analytics, backend, portal developers. Apply the script — and you immediately have a table that ST functions work on: intersections, buffers, distances, aggregates over the area.
The script is self-contained: it enables the PostGIS extension if it is not there yet, creates a table for each layer with a geom column and attributes, inserts objects through ST_GeomFromText with the coordinate system specified (EPSG:4326 by default) and at the end creates a GiST spatial index on geom. Values are escaped and field types are mapped onto PostgreSQL types.
Two details it is better to know in advance. Before creating a table the script runs DROP TABLE IF EXISTS with a cascade — if the schema already contains a table with the same name, it will be deleted along with the dependent objects, so apply the script into a separate schema or check the names. And the volume: up to 500,000 objects are carried over per table, beyond that the export is truncated — for large territories take GeoPackage or FlatGeobuf and load them through ogr2ogr.
What Program Opens PostGIS SQL Files
The following programs and applications can open, edit, and work with PostGIS SQL Dump (.sql) files exported from OSM2CDR:
Format specifications
- Open standard
- 2D only
- Lossless (no quality loss)
- Stores feature attributes
- Output: 1 file
- A self-contained .sql script (CREATE TABLE + INSERT via ST_GeomFromText, SRID 4326) with escaped values; a human-readable dump, not a binary pg_dump or osm2pgsql schema.
Who Uses PostGIS SQL Maps
How to Export PostGIS SQL
How to Open After Export
- psql — create the database, run CREATE EXTENSION postgis, then psql -d your_database -f dump.sql; the layer tables appear right away together with the indexes.
- DBeaver or pgAdmin — open the file as a script and run it as a whole, if working in a terminal is inconvenient.
- Before applying it — look through the beginning of the file: it shows which tables will be dropped and created anew. It is safer to deploy the export into a separate schema.
- QGIS — connect to the database (Layer -> Add PostGIS Layer) and work with the data straight from there, with no intermediate files.
- GeoServer — publish the table as a WMS or WFS layer for an internal portal.
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