[OSM-dev] Hstore revolution

[Jukka Rahkonen]

Hi,

I noticed that a new osm2pgsql for Windows at
http://tile.openstreetmap.org/osm2pgsql.zip supports now also the -k switch
for importing all the tags into a PostGIS hstore column.  I had a try and 
played a bit with hstore and Mapserver. Hstore seems to give very nice
possibilities. It is very easy to create WMS layers by any key/value 
combination that exists and speed was also very good with my sample data
(Finland.osm from Geofabrik).

WMS GetFeatureInfo works also against hstore data, which means that any WMS
client which can send GetFeatureInfo requests can get all the tags from all 
the features on the map whether they are points, lines or polygons.

I uploaded a sample image to http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User_talk:JRA
showing a Mapserver WMS map on QGis client and the result of GetFeatureInfo
query. I believe that OpenLayers can send GetFeatureInfo requests as well. I
tested also that hstore column can be used for direct SQL queries with 
OpenJUMP. Sven Geggus has made a pretty good job with adding this fine feature
into osm2pgsql.

-Jukka Rahkonen-