Importing data using GIS clients

Many GIS software packages can directly connect to databases for reading and writing the data; from our perspective, they are just more database clients. In this section, we'll have a quick look at the very well-known QGIS and the certainly less popular but very powerful Manifold GIS.

Both can export data to databases and read it back. QGIS has a specialized PostGIS export module called SPIT; Manifold's export facility is built in into the GUI and follows the same export routines as other formats handled by the software.