WhereGroup

Web-based geospatial information systems are an efficient and easy to use option to address a wide audience. Any type of information with a spatial aspect, such as geodata previews, maps, building information etc. can be accessed, analysed and visualised by Intra- or Internet.

Publish Your Maps Online

We can provide you with powerful Open Source Technologies to publish your maps and geospatial information online. Using Free Software Licenses provides additional protection of your investment.

Typically, web service layers are managed in a spatial SOA (Service Oriented Architecture). All components must adhere to standards to be able to couple them in a losse architecture. Two spatial components make up the core of the SOA:

• Mapserver a piece of software that can dynamically render maps from a variety of data sources, and
• A Mapclient, which communicate with the server to request a specific map or linked information and provides functionality tailored to its targeted audience. This can range from a simple zoom and pan interface for the average public user to complex functionality for experts.

Most servers are implemented based on libraries such as GDAL/OGR or GeoTools. The following components have been tried and tested in a great number of implementations and are our preferred choice:

• UMN MapServer (including GDAL/OGR)
• Mapbender (including metadata editor for services)
• MapStorer (WebGIS administration)
• GeoServer (a GeoTools implementation of the transactional OGC WFS)
• GeoTools (core component for uDig, GeoServer and others)

UMN MapServer

The UMN MapServer is a C++ based development environment for web mapping solutions, available under the MapServer License.

Due to its high reliability and performance, the UMN MapServer has been established as de facto standard for web-based map services. The following provides a non-extensive overview over some of the powerful features:

• Advanced cartographic output
  • Scale dependent feature drawing and application execution
  • Feature labeling including label collision mediation
  • Fully customizable, template driven output
  • TrueType fonts
  • Map element automation (scalebar, reference map, and legend)
  • Thematic mapping using logical- or regular expression-based classes
• Support for popular scripting and development environments
• PHP, Python, Perl, Ruby, Java, and C#
• Cross-platform support
  • Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, Solaris, and more
• A multitude of raster and vector data formats
  • TIFF/GeoTIFF, EPPL7, and many others via GDAL
  • ESRI shapfiles, PostGIS, ESRI ArcSDE, Oracle Spatial, MySQL and many others via OGR
  • Support for Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) web specifications: OGC WMS (client/server), non-transactional OGC WFS (client/server), OGC WMC, OGC WCS, Filter Encoding, SLD, OGC GML, SOS.
• Map projection support
  • On-the-fly map projection with 1000s of projections through the Proj.4 library
• Link to full documentation

The WhereGroup deploys MapServer in Geospatial Data Infrastructure Projects, where distributed OGC WMS compliant map services are required. By using the GDAL/OGR library, almost all common data formats, ranging from simple shape files to complex object-relational databases, such as PostgreSQL or Oracle, can be used as input data sources.

The WhereGroup offers full commercial first and second level support for UMN MapServer and provides third level support through its partner network.

Mapbender

Mapbender is a PHP and JavaScript based development environment to orchestrate map services in distributed architectures and is provided under the GNU General Public License (GPL). User specific configuration, preferences and profiles are read from the underlying database to dynamically generate web based user interfaces. Typical applications are Geo Portals, City Map Services, SDI Repositories and highly customized spatial editing interfaces. You can find more examples in the Mapbender Gallery.

Functionality includes presentation, navigation and querying of OGC compliant WMS and transactional OGC WFS services. The Mapbender Administration Interface provides functionality for Map Server configuration as well as administration of users, groups and access policies.

• WebGIS Client (OGC WMS, OGC WFS, Catalog Service Client)
• Geospatial CMS (Content Management System)
• Web-based digitizing and editing functionality (OGC WSF-T Client)
• IT-Security (Authentification, Authorisation)
• Billing (Access Protocolls, Copyright enforcement)
• Administration of distributed SDIs
• Link to full description of features

The development of Mapbender has been initiated by the WhereGroup and is run as a graduated Open Source Project of the OSGeo Foundation. The Wheregroup offers full commercial support, including maintenance, change request development and third level support.

MapStorer

MapStorer is a database supported system for managing UMN MapServer projects. Map files can be generated and edited with a web based user interface. The preview of color- or symbol-settings plus the option to view the whole map makes work faster and easier. Generated map projects can be exported as map files.

It uses MySQL to store the map file information and the administrative data. The user interface is implemented in PHP and JavaScript and uses the UMN MapServer as a preview tool for the maps. MapStorer is operating system and platform independent.

MapStorer is an Open Source project initiated by the WhereGroup and run like an Open Source project. It is published under the GNU/GPL and can be downloaded at Sourceforge.

The Wheregroup offers full commercial support, including maintenance, change request development and third level support.

GeoServer

Geoserver is a GeoTools implementation to create map and geo objects through the OGC WMS and OGC WFS service interfaces and is provided under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

GeoServer is mostly used as OGC compliant WFS to find, retrieve and update geo objects. The portal software Mapbender binds OGC WFS GeoServer services with any OGC WMS making it possible to bridge the gap to the UMN MapServer, thus combining the strengths of both packages.

GeoServer still is the only WFS geodata service that comes with a full user interface for administration and operation. The GeoServer features include:

• OGC WMS and OGC WFS-T compliance
• Web-based administration interface
• Tried and tested interfaces for PostGIS, Shapefile, ArcSDE, DB2 and Oracle
• On the fly re-projection using a built-in EPSG table
• Supports JPEG, GIF, PNG, SVG and KML for presentation
• Vector geometries exported as GML or compressed Shapefiles
• Full SLD-Support
• Long Transactions via WFS Lock
• detailed feature description

The WhereGroup offers commercial support for GeoServer.

GeoTools

GeoTools is a Java implemented Geo-Library and API for the development of geo applications, including GeoServer and uDIG, and is provided under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).

GeoTools is a reliable engine for a great number of operational implementations and celebrated its 10th birthday at FOSS4G 2006.

The GeoTools Project has reviewed the whole code base with regard to licensing compliance during the OSGeo Incubation process and has an open and public steering committee that coordinates, supports and promotes the development of the project.