Knowing to A Beginner's Introduction to GRASS GIS
Introduction and brief history of GRASS Software
GRASS or Geographic Analysis Support System, is a software used to analyze and manage geographical data. It is a GIS (Geographic Information System) software originally develop by the United States Army. It is an open source software, whose license is under the GNU GPL. It was developed in 1982, running in a UNIX/VAX system and eventually evolved to support various platforms like Linux and Microsoft Windows.
Looking for GRASS GIS
GRASS GIS is under the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGEO), which manages the enhancements, support and add-ons of the software, as well as promote its use.
GRASS Features and Supported Platforms - GRASS GIS
Throughout the years of its development, GRASS became a stable yet flexible software that can be run in different platforms and be used together with different applications that needs geospatial data or imaging applications that supply data. GRASS GIS is capable of 2D and 3D rendering and visualization, image processing, vector and raster analysis, surface generation, map creation, geostatistics and data management support through SQL. Supported SQL formats are ODBS, PostgreSQL, mySQL, DBF and SQLite.
Since GRASS was developed using a UNIX/VAX system, it is able to run in any UNIX platform like SGI, SUN, HP and IBM, and in operating systems like SGI Irix, BSD, SUN Solaris, IBM AIX and HP UX. Eventually, the software was enhanced to run on Intel-based and Macintosh machines running Linux, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows (via the Cygwin application).
As an open source system, the source code for the GRASS software is available for download at the OSGEO website (www.osgeo.org). Developers are welcome to create their own modules to integrate with the software. A wealth of libraries and API (Application Programming Interface) are available, as well as many documentations, like the "GRASS Programmer's Manual", may be used for reference.
For installing GRASS in a PC environment, having the standard configuration of the current PC (or even laptop) is sufficient. However, a larger memory size (1GB or higher) is recommended for geospatial data analysis. For better processing of visualization tools (like rendering), using a high-end graphics card with OpenGL acceleration would be beneficial. For disk space, around 100MB may be sufficient for the binaries of GRASS, but for data, required disk space may vary depending on the data format.
GRASS Documentation
The Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGEO) website contains links the GRASS GIS software (grass.osgeo.org), where you can download the product (if you are a user) or the source code (if you are a developer). The GRASS Wiki page (grass.osgeo.org/wiki) contains the Documents link where you will find the various sources of information to learn the software, like manuals, tutorials, help in installation and training media.
Another useful link from the site is the GRASS Help where you can find the FAQs, links to Installation Guides, migration information and short tutorials.GRASS GIS
