Besides the interest for self-learning (say necesity), I was interested in the possibility of sharing test datasets for teaching/practicing purposes aimed at the students attending the geodatabase subject of the universitary master in information systems (MUSIGT) of the Public University of Navarre (UPNa).
My previous experience with HEROKU had been interesting but also limited to the provision of PostgreSQL instances, that is, without the PostGIS extension which can only be activated on the paying production plans, something off the limits of the current prospection.
In the past months I've been identifying several web pages that could be candidates to be considered and among them I found this entry in the OSGEO wiki which is specifically dedicated to this subject.
Among the different providers the one I have reviewed first is the Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL. All the Amazon's tech appeal in the form of a 12 month free trying period (if you don't overcome the level of service limits) will you let to test this service along others from the AWS platform... The thing is that I was not willing to acquire any type of commitment, not now nor after 12 months, and so, not without a bit of pity, I declined the proposal.
Next, I had a look to aiven, whose motto your database in the cloud, is pretty clarifying of where they are putting the focus on and of their specialization area. It looks good, with a variety of database paradigms represented by products as PosgreSQL (popular extensions included, among them PostGIS), Redis, InfluxDB, Apache Kafka, etc... deployed on the main platform service providers around the world (Google, Azure, DigitalOcean, UpCloud y Amazon AWS).
In this case there is not any free plan but you can take advantage of a 10$ bonus that you could spent in the more affordable plan called Hobbyist (1CPU, 1GB, 8GB storage, with a fee of aprox. 0.026 $/h, 19$ monthly estimate). Despite you don't have to give your credit card to have the test drive, I've left it aside by the moment for the already stated reasons.
There is another one that looks great: AcuGIS. I have nothing to say apart from the fact that I remains now in a high position of my task list. Maybe next time.
Last to be mentioned in this post and the one that I´ve been testing is QGIS Cloud.
QGIS Cloud
The name might suggest some kind of direct relation with the QGIS project but as far as I know this is an independent solution from the second. Leaving apart this little detail I must say that this is a solution that works and I have not found any problems during the test.This provider offers a means of publishing your maps (QGIS made maps) through a web mapping application in the cloud. It also includes a data hosting service with PostgreSQL/PostGIS (preinstalled) databases (note that all the data used in the published maps should be first uploaded to this storage). The key aspect of this solution relies on the way all the map and data managament is done, based on the use of a QGIS plugin (that is, I think, the main explanation for the name of this product).
Once we have signed in the products page, and after installing the plugin we will be able to upload our maps and data through the plugin.
QGIS Cloud plugin for QGIS |
Along your data you will also have an instance of a OSM database ready to use in your maps.
At this moment two plans are offered: Free and Pro. With the Free plan you will be able to publish an unlimited number of maps (that will be publicly accessible to the world). Regarding to data storage: up to 5 PostGIS 2.0 DB instances, with a maximum total capacity of 50 MB and up to 10 concurrent DB connections. That is, a good set of features that are enough for experimental purposes.
QGIS Cloud as DBaaS
Perhaps we are not interested in the map publishing capacity and we would only like to use this service as a Cloud DB Service provider. This is perfectly possible. The only thing you will need to know is the DB connection details and use them from your favorite tool or application as you can read in this FAQ: PgAdmin, psql, QGIS... or any software that is able to connect to a PostgreSQL server.We can find out the connection details from plugin's panel which shows the list of our database instances when you force the tooltip to appear (holding the mouse over each database name in the list).
It's worth to mention that when accessing from PgAdmin you will have to specify the database name in the maintenance database parameter. It is also important to note thar in all cases SSL is required in the connection configuration. Have a look to this FAQ with examples.
Finally, I would like to say that I will not dare to evaluate the service's quality level as I can't manage all the aspects involved: the possible limitations of the Free plan or my own internet access. But I am sure that it will fulfill my current requirements.