Geospatial Database Cloud Server

Question

Are there any cloud hosting solutions for geospatial data? I am currently writing a directory style app where businesses can sign up and then users can find nearby ones.

I am considering Google App Engine for this, but from what I can tell the GeoModel code is quite expensive (up to tens of thousands of dollars a year) to run since Google updated the pricing of App Engine. It doesn't seem like App Engine's database is really suited to this kind of query (though the SQL solution may be an answer).

I was hoping to find a service where I could send off a HTTP request to add data (a business' id, name and icon url) to a database, and then another one to find a list of businesses that are nearby to a given point. A service is preferable as this is work done for a client and we would like the solution to be managed with as little interaction from us or the client needed as possible.

EDIT: I just found cartodb.com which uses PostgreSQL and is reasonably priced. Are the any other alternatives?

Answer 1

You mentioned going with CartoDB, which is a good choice with a nice UI.

Just adding, if you were just looking for a scalable backend, you could use StormDB. It is a cloud hosted SQL database with geospatial extensions. You data is automatically distributed amongst multiple nodes for write, read, and parallel query scalability.

Answer 2

We have decided to go with cartodb.com because it looks like they have a good price to ease of use ratio.

Answer 3

The App Engine Search API (currently in Experimental) supports GeoPoints and geosearch, and is great for exactly the kind of query that you describe.

See the Google Developers Academy (GDA) App Engine Search API classes for a bit more info and an example as well.

Answer 4

http://www.iriscouch.com/ is a cloud-based host for CouchDB and they support the geocouch extensions for CouchDB to store geoJSON data and perform spatial queries.