Heroku says PostGIS support enables smarter mobile app development

Whether you are looking to compute walkability scores to nearby schools or search for apartments by specific neighborhoods, Heroku says its embrace of geographical data via PostGIS 2.0 will help developers build apps faster and easier. Instead of relying on proprietary tools and managing those tools along with the rest of the stack, developers can now stay with an open-source option tightly linked to the database of choice. That means reduced complexity and the ability to build richer location- based functions faster giving developers more resources while cutting excess services.

Developers can get started with PostGIS 2.0 today by provisioning a database then enabling the extension.

To provision your database:

heroku addons:add heroku-postgresql:crane

Once provisioned you’ll want to connect to it and enable the extension:

$ heroku pg:psql
create extension postgis;

Learn more here: https://postgres.heroku.com/blog/past/2013/4/30/building_location_based_apps_with_postgis/