<para>There is a full length beginner tutorial <ulinkurl="http://trac.osgeo.org/postgis/wiki/WKTRasterTutorial01"> Intersecting vector buffers with large raster coverage using PostGIS Raster</ulink>.
Jorge has a series of blog articles on PostGIS Raster that demonstrate how to load raster data as well as cross compare to same tasks in Oracle GeoRaster. Check out
There is a whole chapter (more than 35 pages of content) dedicated to Raster with free code and data downloads at <ulinkurl="http://www.postgis.us/chapter_13">PostGIS in Action - Raster chapter</ulink>.
You can <ulinkurl="http://www.postgis.us/page_buy_book">buy PostGIS in Action</ulink> now from Manning and get all draft chapters NOW and as they are revised (note: all chapters are completed but undergoing revision) and completed book once out.
You can also buy from Amazon now at a significant discount and lock in lowest price sold before publication, but have to wait for the book to come out to receive your copy.
First you need a working PostGIS 1.3.5 or above and be running PostgreSQL 8.3, 8.4, or 9.0. Note in POstGIS 2.0 PostGIS Raster is fully integrated, so it will be compiled when you compile PostGIS.</para>
If you are on Mac OSX Leopard or Snow Leopard, there are binaries available at <ulinkurl="http://www.kyngchaos.com/software/postgres">Kyng Chaos Mac OSX PostgreSQL/GIS binaries</ulink>.
<para>For other platforms, you generally need to compile yourself. Dependencies are PostGIS and GDAL. For more details about compiling from source, please refer to <ulinkurl="http://trac.osgeo.org/postgis/wiki/WKTRaster/Documentation01#a2.3-CompilingandInstallingfromSources">Installing PostGIS Raster from source (in prior versions of PostGIS)</ulink></para>
<para>I get error could not load library "C:/Program Files/PostgreSQL/8.4/lib/rtpostgis.dll": The specified module could not be found.
or could not load library on Linux when trying to run rtpostgis.sql</para>
</question>
<answer>
<para>rtpostgis.so/dll is built with dependency on libgdal.dll/so. Make sure for Windows you have libgdal.dll in the bin folder of your PostgreSQL install.
For Linux libgdal has to be in your path or bin folder. </para>
<para>You may also run into different errors if you don't have PostGIS installed in your database. Make sure to install PostGIS first in your
database before trying to install the raster support.</para>
<para>Currently you need <ulinkurl="http://www.gdal.org/">GDAL 1.6+</ulink> though later versions would be better since they have many memory leak fixes, <ulinkurl="http://www.python.org/download/releases/2.5/">Python 2.5</ulink> with <ulinkurl="http://pypi.python.org/pypi/GDAL/1.6.1">GDAL 1.6 or higher bindings</ulink>,
<para>Any that your gdal library supports. GDAL supported formats are documented <ulinkurl="http://www.gdal.org/formats_list.html">GDAL File Formats</ulink>.</para>
<para>To see more examples and syntax refer to <ulinkurl="http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/wiki/frmts_wtkraster.html#a3.2-Readingdata">Reading Raster Data of PostGIS Raster section</ulink></para>
<para>Yes. Check out the page <ulinkurl="http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/wiki/DownloadingGdalBinaries">GDAL Binaries</ulink> page. Any compiled wiht PostgreSQL
support should have PostGIS Raster in them. </para>
<para>We know for sure the following windows binaries have PostGIS Raster built in.</para>
<para><ulinkurl="http://fwtools.maptools.org/">FWTools latest stable version for Windows is compiled with Raster support</ulink>.</para>
<para>PostGIS Raster is undergoing many changes. If you want to get the latest nightly build for Windows -- then check out
the Tamas Szekeres nightly builds built with Visual Studio which contain GDAL trunk, Python Bindings and Mapserver executables and PostGIS Raster driver built-in. Just
support it with fairly minimal effort. Again for Windows Tamas binaries <ulinkurl="http://vbkto.dyndns.org/sdk/">http://vbkto.dyndns.org/sdk/</ulink> are a good choice if you don't want the hassle of having to setup to compile your own.</para>
<para>For a more extensive discussion on this topic, check out Jorge Arévalo <ulinkurl="http://gis4free.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/oracle-georaster-part-i/">Oracle GeoRaster and PostGIS WKT Raster: First impressions </ulink></para>
<para>The major advantage of one-georeference-by-raster over one-georeference-by-layer is to allow:</para>
<para>* coverages to be not necessarily rectangular (which is often the case of raster coverage covering large extents. See the possible raster arrangements in the documentation)</para>
<para>* rasters to overlaps (which is necessary to implement lossless vector to raster conversion) </para>
<para>It's a bit like if PostGIS would force you to store only full rectangular vector coverage without gaps or overlaps (a perfect rectangular topological layer).
This is very practical in some applications but practice has shown that it is not realistic or desirable for most geographical coverages. Vector structures needs the flexibility to store discontinuous and non-rectangular coverages.
We think it is a big advantage that raster structure should benefit as well. </para>