Web GIS

Thanks to Jeroen's organization we had an excellent time in Bolsena.
Many developers involved in a enchanting place.

Here my photo gallery and here the photo gallery of the OSGeo group in FLickr.

With Kappu we've started the creation of the new ka-Map! version, integrating OpenLayers. The work is not yet completed but anyway promising.
Hope to post some news about a first release soon

ciao
Lorenzo

I had the pleasure to spend a month in Cuba.

Thanks to the Oficina del Historiador I've been invited to give a course over Web Mapping and OGC Standards.
Oficina del Historiador is the efficient institution that is restoring the historical center of La Habana, the capital of Cuba.

During my days in this beautifully town I've been invited to do a couple of conferences about OSGeo and its Spanish-speaking Local Chapter. The Cuban community is definitely interested in FOSS and I've found a lot of enthusiasm between different institutions. Possibly we'll soon see a Cuban event on FOSS4G.

In these days, I've been lucky to be invited to visit the Universidad de las Ciencias Informáticas (UCI) and give a conference there too. This university has 10.000 students focused on IT, an "army" of programmers. It would be cool to do some workshops there next time I'll be in Cuba.

Last note on gvSIG. During my courses I had the chance to test the new add-on that allow to export the current View as a mapfile for UMN Mapserver. I love this tool, it make it easy to everybody do create a usable mapfile. Hope to see it published soon.

ciao
Lorenzo

This is the most important feature we've developed lately with Kappu (aka Andrea Cappugi).
Andrea did a REST extension to GeoServer called SLDService. This extension use GeoTools' data access features and let you create an SLD file using those information that normal OWS (OGC) services don't offer. As example: you can now make classifications by unique values or natural and quantile intervals. This is the kind of things that are not feasible using just Javascript and OGC services.

SLDService deals with little chunks of SLD code. This makes the service very responsive and the client job easier, don't need to parse tons of XML with Javascript.

Editing SLD

OWS Manager has a simple interface to deal with SLDService.

• this screencast shows an example of unique values classification.


• A second screencast shows you how to play with quantile intervals.

You can have a try with the
online example .

This features are still under development, code is available on Geoserver svn and OpenLayers svn but it's not yet recommended in production.


ciao
Lorenzo

Last summer I've published a first example of WMS Manager.
It is a concept interface for OpenLayers to deal with WMS servers.
Now is on process to become an AddIn for OpenLayers.

Lately, working on other OGC standards integration, I've changed the name of this concept application to OWS Manager.

OWS Manager aims to deal with:
- Web Map Context (WMC): read/write support.
- Web Map Service (WMS): manage maps from multiple servers passing through getCapabilties request. Improved LayerList to deal with multiple layers from different WMS servers.
- Style Layer Descriptor (SLD): edit styles for WMS layers using SLDService for GeoServer (extension made by Kappu).
- Catalogue Service for Web (CSW): search on a CSW interface (ex: GeoNetwork).

I would like to show some screencasts to explain what's already done and I will split this thread in some posts. Let's start with WMS.

Web Map Service (WMS)

In this screencast you can see how to add layers to the map choosing form a list of WMS Servers and then how to make a query to the queryable layers.

When a server is chosen the getCapabilities is requested and the result is parsed and shown on a multi-select list. You can select one or more layers and even move the vertical order of appearance.
The output format for every layer can be specified between the formats available in the server. Openlayers' Overlays can be requested by checking the appropriated box.

When WMS layers are queryables a "(q)" symbol is shown and the Query function returns GetFeatureInfo outputs "drilling" all queryable layers.

to be continued...

Lorenzo