Much of the conceptual background and structure managing a geospatial data model using a platform-independent model (PIM) has been outlined in previous posts. And while it is useful to understand how the PIM is structured in the tables and views inside the PIM database, the critical knowledge relates to the way the PIM API retrieves and organizes this information, and details the properties and methods of the various PIM API objects. So if you are not particularly interested in the conceptual, now would be a good time to pay attention.
This post begins the process of moving from the abstract to the concrete. In the next series of posts, we will begin to build a simple data model in order to not only demostrate the concepts that have been previously discussed but also to showcase many of the existing tools for helping with various management tasks such as version migrations, script generation and data validation. In this post, we'll begin discussing the API provides the business rules for interacting with the PIM, enables configuration management activities, and acts as the interface bewteen the PIM and the applications that use it.
