GeoWeb Software Development

Documenting software development with a GIS twist.

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OSCAR JavaScript API pending a beta release

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The CARIS web development group is nearing a beta release of the OSCAR JavaScript API 12. This library is an extension of OpenLayers, spiced up with widgets from the popular YUI and jQuery UI user interface libraries. This is the same library used to build Spatial Fusion Viewer (SFV).

OSCAR will allow the creation of custom web map clients. Add whatever functionality you need, and still be able to optionally connect to SFV as part of your centralized site management goals. For situations where you do not need this additional customization, you can still use SFV's Map Snippets that can be added to any existing web page via a HTML IFrame.

The code will be put on GitHub under the Apache License 2.0. This will allow people to make their own development branches for their own customization or simply as a way to contribute code to the project. Building your own distribution will easily done using Maven 3.

Expect code examples to be posted, API documentation and a single file distribution.

Spatial Fusion Viewer / Server 5.6 + preview for 5.7

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Well it's been some time since my last post, so I feel obligated to first recap the main product that I am responsible for at CARIS.

A month ago we released Spatial Fusion Server 5.6 and Spatial Fusion Viewer 5.6. The big push in these product releases was to support INSPIRE. Spatial Fusion Server introduced an INSPIRE View Service that extends WMS 1.3.0 (based on the INSPIRE Technical Guidance v3.0) and an INSPIRE Download Service that extends WFS 2.0 (based on the INSPIRE Technical Guidance Draft v2.0). Spatial Fusion Viewer introduced WMS 1.3.0 client support, which is essential for any INSPIRE map viewer. We've taken time to upgrade libraries in 5.5 and 5.6 to ensure that the software is up-to-date and has the latest security patches. This includes updating to Tomcat 7, for Servlet specification 3.0 and updating to HSQLDB 2.2.

Since this release, we've released a patch for SFV (5.6.1) to dramatically improve selection performance and a patch for SFS (5.6.1) that fixes a few issues discovered that relate to Shape file download, KML download and mime types.

So all-in-all, it's been a very busy schedule. However the team didn't stop there. They're hard at work on SFS 5.7 and SFV 5.7. Here is what you can expect:
  1. SFS will implement the Web Catalogue Server (CS-W) 2.0.2 OWS standard.
  2. SFS will support a new Postgres + PostGIS data source.
  3. SFS will support INSPIRE Data Specifications for Annex I via Postgres + PostGIS or Oracle data sources.
  4. A process to prepare your data (i.e., S-57, Shape) to be compliant with INSPIRE Data Specifications for Annex I.
  5. SFV will have a new and improved data download widget.
  6. SFV will have advanced POI support to display data from popular media sites such as YouTube and overlay it on your map.
  7. SFS and SFV are both being built and deployed on Java 7.

    Stay tuned for more details!

Maritime DevCon 2011 in Fredericton!

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The city of Fredericton is in for a real treat on Saturday, June 18th, 2011. Maritime DevCon 2011 is rolling into town and based on how successful DevCon 2010 was, I strongly recommend anyone with an interest in software development to attend. It's not every day that people in Fredericton have something like this in their backyard. yes

The day long conference will be held at:

Wu Conference Centre, UNB
6 Duffie Drive
Fredericton, New Brunswick E3B 5A3
Canada

Hope to see you there!

Register here

If you register before June 2nd, you get about a 20% discount!

Spatial Fusion Enterprise 5.5 preview

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With the release of Spatial Fusion Server (SFS) 5.4 and Spatial Fusion Viewer (SFV) 5.4 over a month ago, the team hasn't gotten much rest. We're already hard at work on the 5.5 releases which are planned for this summer.

Looking back at the 5.4's
Spatial Fusion Server 5.4 introduced Web Coverage Service (WCS) 1.0 and 1.1 support. Bathymetric data can be downloaded as XYZ, 32 bit GeoTIFF and BAG formats. Spatial Fusion Viewer 5.4 complimented this by allowing the download of coverages via an improved download widget. As a bonus, a centralized site administration feature was included that allows administrators to embed simple maps throughout their web pages, yet have them manaaged from a single point.

Looking forward to the 5.5's
There are a fair number of improvements happening for these two products.

I'll start by saying that we've updated the build system that is used to build these products to Maven 3. It was an easy enough upgrade from Maven 2, with the odd plugin upgrade required. One large benefit of moving to this system is the improved build speeds that it provides.

The team has decided to also take time and upgrade several of the key underlying libraries used to build the products. This ensures that we get the latest feature, speed and security improvements that they offer. SFS and SFV are now using the latest versions of Struts 2, Spring and Hibernate frameworks to name but a few. On top of this, we're now using Tomcat 7 (servlet spec 3, JSP spec 2.2) in our app. Definitely leading edge here!

We have also decided to remove the Windows installations that were previously used to install SFS and SFV. This is an important step to becoming more operating system agnostic, which is very important in our future plans. In their place, documentation will be provided on how administrators will deploy the system. This gives administrators full control over the set up and security updates, as well as room for more flexible deployments. The only Windows installation that remains is the Spatial Fusion Runtime (formerly named Spatial Fusion Services) which SFS uses to leverage our extensive native CARIS libraries.

SFS 5.5 got even more attention. We are now planning on introducing Web Feature Service (WFS) 2.0 (ISO 19142) compliance. This version of WFS is the first version to be ISO certified, which is terrific news for organizations that pride themselves on having standardized ISO geospatial web services.

We are also currently prototyping a new means of rendering and querying S-57 product features on the web. The plan is to replace the current S-57 support with this new prototype if everything works well. Stay tuned!

SFV 5.4 is getting a well deserved face-lift, which includes an improved theme widget and a new layer widget. Check it out!

Fredericton group contributing to OpenStreetMap

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For those who are not aware, there is a group of people (with an interest in mapping) who get together on a regular basis. Their goal? To improve the OpenStreetMap.

If you have an interest in mapping, or would like to learn how, please check out the Fredericton Region OpenStreetMap Enthusiasts site for an upcoming event.

Here are some pictures of the last get-together that UNB Fredericton
sponsored with a room and free Wi-Fi for everyone.

Can you trust your data to the "cloud"?

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With the highly publicized Amazon EC2 crash, many people are now left with a fair bit of doubt when it comes to making use of the cloud. After it all was said and done, major sites such as Foursquare and Reddit experienced significant downtime and 0.07 percent of users permanently lost their data.

The disillusionment comes from a reaction to the marketing buzz that has been selling the cloud concept so strongly over the past few years. A lot of money has been spent on convincing people and organizations that having another company specialize in providing IT services, hardware and surrounding processes is a smart idea. The hype is so intense that academics or business leaders will put the cloud into their slide show presentations without even understanding what it is or how it fits.

I never really bought into this hype since it's nothing more than borrowing a server somewhere. It's something I've had to do since I started working on the web. The underlying business model has been around for ages. It's called leasing. (Aside: One of the companies that I worked for in the United States made a great deal of money doing this since they'd lease a combo deal of a computer + software + service for a affordable monthly fee. Since the county couldn't muster the funds to own the computer, software, and service it, the fee could fit into a county's budget. In the long run, I'm sure many counties paid much more than the system and software was worth... but that's the business of leasing.)

Now the interesting thing that comes out of this EC2 crash is that despite whatever was advertised for up-time and data security obviously didn't pan out in real life. This means that when you cut through all of the buzz, there are real people involved behind the scenes and unknown processes. Can you trust someone else to do a better job than you can? It depends on your risk tolerance.



Since the birth of my daughter, I realized that I'd have a lot of digital family photos and videos that I didn't want to lose. This was the first time I considered using cloud storage. After considering the risks, costs and trust factors, I instead purchased a NAS and took the risk upon myself. This was in January 2011.

A lot of GIS software companies have been pushing the cloud idea. To be fair, it does have a place. However it seems that a question that comes up over and over again is whether organizations that have very important data can trust a cloud provider with it. I would honestly say after seeing what just happened, and forgoing any legal aspects, the answer is no... if you can afford not to. But also, I cannot say that many organizations have the skills to do a better job themselves.

I believe this crash event will keep many serious data producers or mission-critical data distributors skeptical of the cloud for a very long time. In fact, most will continue (if they have the funds) to run their own IT infrastructures.

** Update - It looks like a person lost all of their personal data on the cloud. I'm sure there will be more occurrences like this in the future.
http://www.twitlonger.com/show/bt2p2o

The Electronic Frontier Foundation calls for an Open Wireless Movement

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It's been a while since my last update, which obviously doesn't do much to encourage my two readers to continue following this blog. lol However, now I have a few things I want to write about. I'll learn from my mistakes in the past and spread the posts over the next few days.

For the past few months I've been heavily considering sharing a Wi-Fi hotspot. This idea came about after a couple of realizations:
  1. Mobile data plans are ridiculously priced in Canada.
  2. Wi-Fi hotspots are very nice when you have an Android phone with no data plan.

When you put those two things together, you begin to realize how helpful you can be to people (possibly in emergency situations) by sharing your Wi-Fi connection. Yea, I know you're all thinking "But my network needs to be secure! What if someone uses my connection and does something bad." But seriously, what are the chances of that? It's probably less likely of a problem than Sony failing to secure and encrypt user data on the PlayStation Network. But realistically, sharing a connection doesn't necessarily mean less security. I think the population is starting to get a bit brainwashed about needing to lock down our Wi-Fi, and I think it's about time we started waking up. It's possible to share Wi-Fi and still have a secured network.

Now here is where it gets interesting. With everyone securing their Wi-Fi connections, this ensures that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) can still sell the Internet-on-a-wire to more homes. (You wouldn't want your neighbour on your Wi-Fi would you?!wink ) At least in many cases the pipe guarantees unlimited Internet plans due to competition years ago.

Wait a minute... aren't the Canadian ISPs (in most cases) also the same organizations who also run the cellular networks? And they're the same organizations who sell IMT-2000 (2G, 3G, G) data plans on these networks, which is being an ISP again, but for mobile devices.

Now let's put this together.
  1. Canadian Telecom companies don't want you to share your Wi-Fi because they want to bill everyone individually for the line coming into the house.
  2. Many Canadian Telecom companies offer unlimited Internet due to previous years of competition.
  3. Canadian Telecom companies are in the mobile phone market. (duh!)
  4. The Canadian Telecom companies also offer mobile Internet (limited) for ridiculous prices, and Canadians are buying it.

One of the above has to give, and late last year / early this year it was "Unlimited Internet" that can come into your house. Usage Based Billing (UBB) (I will always assert) was an idea to get the CRTC behind the idea of limiting the unlimited Internet pipes into people's homes, based on the how much money they're making from their mobile Internet plans. Widespread revolt is holding this off for now, but just imagine if it had passed. Many Canadians would be paying for your Internet access twice, and getting a lot less of it.

Today, I was very happy to read an article where the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is calling for an Open Wireless Movement. If you read this article, you'll see that they're challenging industry for simple ways to create Wi-Fi hotspots that can easily limit bandwidth and still secure your local network. I'm really excited about this prospect because this can open the way to fight back against the Canadian Telecom companies by pitting their own services (unlimited Internet) against their own services (mobile Internet) in many cases. I feel this would be a very fitting outcome considering their greedy UBB plans and ridiculous data plans.

Kudos EFF, Kudos!

** Update - It looks like others are starting to feel the same way.
http://www.good.is/post/tear-down-this-wall-why-open-wifi-is-safer-than-you-think/

New features for Spatial Fusion Server and Spatial Fusion Viewer

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My team has been busy working on Spatial Fusion Server 5.4 and Spatial Fusion Viewer 5.4. Both applications are due to be released in the first quarter of 2011.

The major feature introduced in Spatial Fusion Server is the Web Coverage Service interface for data stored in the Bathy DataBASE 3.0 Server. This allows for downloading gridded bathymetry data as BAG (type of HDF5), ASCII XYZ and 32 bit GeoTIFF. Multipoint bathymetry data can be downloaded as ASCII XYZ.

As part of this work, we had to spend a lot of time trying to figure out a simple way for Spatial Fusion Viewer users to download this data via this OpenGeospatial Web Service interface, using a simple download widget. To do this, OSCAR (the CARIS JavaScript API) was enhanced, theme creation was refined and the map user interface has been updated and simplified. Overall, it looks like the work was well worth it, as beta users have already mentioned how simple it is to use.

Along with all of this work, we've touched up and updated other parts of the software. One such example is the ability to now display sounding values on top of bathymetry from Bathy DataBASE. Here is a picture of it being drawn via the Web Map Service interface in Gaia.

Things are looking great for 2011!

Hello 2011, nice to meet you

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I haven't posted an update in a while, and that's because I've been busy with the arrival of my daughter. Rebecca Ann Astle was born on November 22nd (my Mother's birthday) and she's taken up a lot of my time since then, as it should be. Her mother and I are so very happy and fortunate to have her.

Now that we're into the new year, I've been hearing a lot of talk about the many events of 2010 and talk of the future. It's fitting I guess, since January got it's name from Janus the Roman god of gates who is often depicted as having two heads, facing in opposite directions. One looks into the past, one into the future.

Yesterday I heard someone say that it was a horrible time to raise a child. If I took this at face-value, I would have probably agreed. However, I took a moment to think (as I normally do) and thought of all of the great things that we have today, such as our advanced medical care.

It seems like the human psyche is designed to focus on negative events. This is probably good in the basic evolutionary sense, so that humans learn to avoid mistakes that others make and allow them to survive and procreate. However, it seems like we obsess about the negative so much that we don't often balance those thoughts with the positive. Positive events are what people expect, so they're quickly forgotten.

So I'd like to challenge everyone this year to think more positively, and work together to continue striving to make this world a better place.

Metadata?!

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Well, Geomatics Atlantic 2010 has wrapped up and I must admit that it was a lot of fun. It was good to get a chance to get out and talk with all of the people who use our software, take notes, and talk about the past and future. There were a lot of great paper presentations, and I was honoured to be selected as one of those presenters. I really enjoyed presenting and I'd love to do it again sometime in the future.

During the conference, the OSGeo Atlantic Chapter had it's first meeting where we selected our first representative and co-chairs. Following the meeting I got a list of CARIS employees who would be interested in joining the chapter and I got quite the response. It's good to see CARIS employees taking the initiative to support the free and open source software community for geospatial, that is OSGeo. We use a fair amount of open source geospatial software in our products and we're proud of it.

Metadata?!

Lately I've heard another resurgence in discussions about metadata in regards to spatial data. So I figured I'd do a quick summary of my thoughts on the subject without getting into any ISO details that seem to confuse the overall idea.

If you have had any experience in web page creation, you must have stumbled upon Meta data profiles. These are often used by Web Crawlers as they move about the web, gathering information for search engines to index the World Wide Web. Web Crawlers gathering data is the first step in allowing your search engine to know what exists on the web and ranking the content. Currently the geospatial community doesn't use bots for this type of discovery because, well, it's tough to figure out what stuff is. There are a lot of proprietary spatial formats and they don't lend themselves for discoverability. That is why there are now XML files that help better describe spatial datasets, and they're put into discovery portals so that people have a one stop shop to find what they're looking for. Now that pretty much puts the Geospatial Community into the mid-1990s where there were more search engines than you can shake a stick at. I personally don't care much for this, but whatever... that's where we're at until everyone finally just uses Opengeospatial Web Services that exchange spatial data in a more descriptive way. (Many thanks to the OGC for trying to make this happen!) This will leads to a more Semantic Web where people can find spatial data easily on the web using existing search engines. Because let's face it, everyone uses the web to find stuff so let's have it work with the current infrastructure. If we were driving around downtown looking for data, we'd attach big flashing lights and loud horns to whatever we wanted people to find. bigsmile It just makes sense. But enough about discoverability...

The other big case for metadata is to accurately describe your data. Sure enough, those same scary ISO specifications exist with standardized ways to represent what something means. This helps software more than it helps users, since everything is standardized and should help with system interoperability. If you think we're describing data for discoverability, you're wrong. I talked about that earlier. Pay attention. ninja I'm talking about the fact that a lot of these various spatial data formats cannot accurately describe their content well. This is a big deal for many organizations since they want to correctly and clearly describe their data for various reasons, some of which are legal. So in this case, if I'm to distribute a spatial dataset to some other party, I want to make sure that metadata goes with it. Whether the metadata be inside of the exchange file or along with it, it doesn't matter. My legal responsibility is fulfilled and I did my best to describe what was provided. In my opinion, this is the first and most important goal of metadata. Again, with Opengeospatial Web Services, this isn't a problem. The OGC has taken steps to make this more and more of a non-issue.

When data is shared with suitable metadata to complete it, you can accurately describe your map. A map in this case is whatever you're seeing in your favourite GIS product after loading well described data. If you have data loaded from various web services, at a glance you can quickly get information on your map. This is a simple and effective use of metadata. To an end-user, they don't even have to know what metadata is. They'll see an "info" link on their map page and see information about their map. It's just that simple. But first, we need to accurately describe our data.

So don't get too worked up about metadata. Definitely don't get too concerned with discoverability. It's happening and I bet it's not going to happen the way we currently expect it. Instead, focus on correctly describing your spatial exchange formats. The rest will fall into place.