Spatial Databases - Desktop GIS: Mapping the Planet with Open Source Tools - page 102

Figure 7.4: List of available PostGIS layers
database access configuration to make sure you have privileges to con-
nect. Once you can connect, just click OK to save the connection. This
takes you back to the Add PostGIS Table(s) dialog box.
We are now ready to connect to the database—with our new connection
selected in the drop-down list, just click the Connect button. Once you
do this, the list of available layers is populated as shown in Figure 7.4 .
If we look at the list of tables, we see a representative collection of Post-
GIS data layers in our database. Under the Type column, you will notice
an icon that indicates the feature type stored in the table. These can be
point, multipoint, linestring, multilinestring, polygon, or multipolygon.
You can't distinguish from the icon whether a given feature is a regular
or “multi” type feature.
The Name column shows the name of the layer in the following format:
schema.table (geometry column name)
So, for example, the alaska layer is a polygon layer in the “public”
schema and has its geometry stored in a column named shape . You'll