Following the success of the OpenGeo Suite 3.0 release, we’re proud to release 3.0.1. This release is primarily a maintenance and quality assurance release that contains several bug fixes, improved documentation, and component updates like GeoServer 2.2.1. OpenGeo Suite 3.0.1 is available for download free of charge with a 30-day trial of OpenGeo’s commercial support.

We’ve also introduced new offerings—Community One-Time and Enterprise Plus—to meet growing demand from smaller organizations seeking support for open source geospatial software. Community One-Time offers enterprise support to Community Edition users for one incident for up to 15 business days. Enterprise Plus provides a year of enterprise support for smaller production environments with straightforward support requirements, such as those publishing data from basic geospatial formats and serving a limited number of users.

More information is available in the release notes and our pricing page.

• Creating a GeoServer Split Polygon WPS Process (Part I): Martin explains the creation of a WPS process for splitting polygons using GeoServer’s Java API.
• Using GeoServer’s Split Polygon WPS Process (Part II): Tim follows up by describing how a web client can take advantage of this process to split polygons using utilities in available in OpenLayers.
• Surface Interpolation in GeoServer: Martin explains how NASA is using rendering transformations to display meteorological data collected from schools around the world.
• Managing fault tolerance in GeoServer metadata: David describes a new option in GeoServer allowing for increased robustness with lenient resource handling.
• INSPIRE View Service and GeoServer: Bart demonstrates progress towards INSPIRE compliance for European government agencies.
• Creating dynamic contour maps with server-side processing: Mike reviews how to create a dynamic contour map with GeoServer WPS.

Thanks again to everyone who helped test OpenGeo Suite 3.0-beta1!

The release of OpenGeo Suite 3.0 adds many new features and improvements that will greatly expand the capabilities of our flagship product and ease replacement of legacy software with a modern web-based solution. Below are some highlights of what you’ll find in OpenGeo Suite 3.0:

• Server-side processing
  • OGC Web Processing Service (WPS) provides a standard for inputs and outputs (requests and responses) for geospatial processing services such as polygon overlays, buffers, or custom processes.
  • Rendering transformations make processing operations easier in browser-based visualizations by enabling just-in-time use of any WPS process as part of any layer’s style.
  • Server-side scripting in Python and JavaScript allows users to easily deploy their own server-side processes using concise and straightforward APIs.
  • PostGIS 2.0 brings vector and raster analysis into the database.
• GeoServer security now supports user groups as well as a number of new authentication mechanisms including LDAP, digest and X.509 certificate authentication.
• Virtual services allow GeoServer to support multi-tenancy, enabling a single GeoServer instance to publish multiple service endpoints.
• A new caching configuration interface in GeoServer includes the ability to define new grid sets, specify which layers to cache, seed or truncate the cache, and more.
• OGC Web Feature Service 2.0 (WFS) adds some interesting new capabilities, including paging, stored queries, and extended operators.
• Upgraded components, including the adoption of GeoServer 2.2, PostGIS 2.0, and GeoWebCache 1.3

Download the 3.0 release to see for yourself. We strongly advise reading the upgrade instructions and backing up all data beforehand as this release requires a backwards-incompatible upgrade. Packages are available for most common operating systems:

• Download OpenGeo Suite 3.0 for Windows
• Download OpenGeo Suite 3.0 for Mac OS X
• Get OpenGeo Suite 3.0 for Linux (RPM
• Get OpenGeo Suite 3.0 for Linux (Debian)

Questions? Help us continue to make and support great software by providing feedback on our GetSatisfaction forum.

Next week we’ll review how the OpenGeo Suite is a step forward for commercial open source geospatial software. In the meantime, if want to know more about the features listed above, read on! Read the rest of this entry »

Following the recent release of OpenGeo Suite 3.0-beta1, we received a few requests for Linux packages and we’re happy to announce that those are now available for download, with a few caveats. As with all our beta releases, use these at your own risk. Also, be aware that if you want to eventually install the final 3.0 packages you will first have to uninstall these beta packages—there will be no seamless upgrade.

To avoid accidental upgrades, we’ve decided not to publish these packages to our standard repositories and are instead providing them from the staging repositories that we use for testing prior to releases. Just use our usual Linux installation instructions but be sure to use the following repositories instead:

• Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid): http://apt.opengeo.org/stage/suite/v3/ubuntu
• CentOS 5: http://yum.opengeo.org/stage/suite/v3/centos/5
• CentOS 6: http://yum.opengeo.org/stage/suite/v3/centos/6

Any feedback you provide will help us continue to make and support great software. If you find any bugs please report them on GetSatisfaction. Don’t forget that this is a beta version — we advise against deploying this in a production environment and remind you to follow the upgrade instructions to backup your data directory before installing.

OpenGeo is proud to announce to the release of the OpenGeo Suite 3.0-beta1. This release brings many new features and improvements, including the adoption of GeoServer 2.2, PostGIS 2.0, and GeoWebCache 1.3. Here is just a short list of highlights you’ll find if you try out Suite 3.0-beta1:

Processing

This release brings the OpenGeo Suite closer than ever towards being a comprehensive spatial data toolset. While data processing has historically been a strength for proprietary desktop-based solutions, those of you who have seen Paul Ramsey’s “Spatial IT on the Spatial Web” talk know that we see a future in through-the-web processing. We know that these features are important to our users and in the marketplace and this release makes significant advances across the stack in terms of through-the-web processing of geospatial data.

In addition to a slew of new vector functions, PostGIS 2.0 includes raster data and raster/vector analysis in the database.  PostGIS 2.0 users can merge and recalculate rasters with map algebra expressions, summarize them using vector overlays, and extract new information using vectorization routines — all the power of a raster/vector GIS, exposed within the SQL database.

With the adoption of GeoServer 2.2, this release brings many processing improvements to our spatial data server, including integration of the OGC Web Processing Service (WPS) and the introduction of rendering transformations. WPS provides a standard for inputs and outputs (requests and responses) for geospatial processing services such as polygon overlays, buffers, or even custom processes. Rendering transformations provide custom geoprocessing within the map rendering pipeline in a highly flexible way. This allows for changes in data representation between vector and raster to do things like display observation data points or computed contour lines of a vector layer as as a raster interpolated surface.

We’ll also be integrating server-side Python and Javascript into the final release of OpenGeo Suite 3.0, to allow users to easily roll their own lightweight server-side processes: we call this new feature “GeoScript”. GeoScript will enable developers to do simple processing tasks quickly in a lightweight development environment using concise and straightforward API’s.

Security

Sometimes — well, often — the stars align and a client of ours requests a feature that we’re interested in building. We’re especially pleased when we get to build these because we know they’ll be useful to the greater community of users. So, when NOAA recently requested increased support for various authentication mechanisms, we were able to retrofit the GeoServer security subsystem and add support for a number of new authentication mechanisms, including LDAP, digest, X.509 certificate authentication, and more. These improvements also includes the addition of user groups.

Virtual Services

Also thanks to NOAA, virtual services allow GeoServer to support the notion of multi-tenancy, enabling a single GeoServer instance to publish multiple service endpoints. Workspace local settings allow for specifying service settings such as styles, layer groups, contact information, proxy settings, and output format settings on a per workspace basis.

GeoWebCache UI

For all of the GeoWebCache users out there, it’s now possible to access a new GeoWebCache configuration GUI directly from the GeoServer web admin interface. This includes the ability to define new grid sets, specify which layers to cache, seed or truncate the cache, and more. If you’re not already using GeoWebCache in production there has never been a better time to start!

Try it!

Download the 3.0-beta1 release to see for yourself. Packages are available for Windows and Mac OS X and we’ve provided access to our staging repositories for Ubuntu and CentOS users.

• Download OpenGeo Suite 3.0-beta1 for Windows
• Download OpenGeo Suite 3.0-beta1 for Mac OS X
• Get OpenGeoSuite 3.0-beta1 for Linux

Any feedback you provide will help us continue to make and support great software. If you find any bugs please report them on GetSatisfaction. Don’t forget that this is a beta version — we advise against deploying this in a production environment and remind you to follow the upgrade instructions (for Windows, for Mac OS X) to backup your data directory before upgrading.

We are excited to release a new version of the OpenGeo Suite! Along with the many improvements and bug fixes from the open source communities, this release includes for the first time a toolkit for developing and deploying applications powered by the OpenGeo Suite. This release also greatly improves our support for raster formats.

OpenGeo SDK

The OpenGeo Suite Client SDK provides tools for developing and deploying web mapping applications backed by the OpenGeo Suite, like GeoExplorer. It provides a plugin-based architecture leveraging OpenLayers, Ext JS, and GeoExt that allows you to build powerful web mapping applications by providing a JSON configuration. Those of you familiar with our GXP workshop know all about developing applications with the OpenGeo Client SDK. For more information, check out our tutorial on developing applications with the OpenGeo SDK.

Better raster support with GDAL

The OpenGeo Suite now comes with support for publishing data from many formats supported by the Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL), including DTED, EHdr, AIG, ENVIHdr, and many more. MrSID is available as well to those with a license for LizardTech’s decoding software development kit.

Other noteworthy changes

As mentioned in the release notes, the OpenGeo Suite 2.5 also includes a number of noteworthy changes, among them:

• Improvements to the GeoServer Layer Importer, including Oracle and SQL Server options as well as support for importing ZIP files containing multiple Shapefiles.
• Options in GeoServer to allow layers to be available but not advertised as well as options for producing lenient capabilities documents to prevent invalid XML output from misconfigured layers.
• Better WFS output from GeoServer, including paging and sorting in the WFS capabilities as well as user-defined WFS GetFeatureInfo output.
• Better 3D support in GeoServer and GeoTools, including proper handling of read/write of 3D polygons from Oracle and proper handling of 3D data in GML3 encoding

Try it!

Download our free trial to try out all of these new features and contact us to purchase the support you need to put your project into production.

OpenGeo is evaluating offering training sessions for GIS instructors at colleges and universities. If you are affiliated with an academic institution, please answer the following questions so we can gauge interest. This form is intended to be filled out by GIS users and instructors in academica. If you would like to find out more or discuss your specific needs please contact us.

We’re happy to extend an invitation to a discounted two-day training session on May 16th and 17th at our New York City office! This two-day introduction to the OpenGeo Suite—including training on GeoServer, OpenLayers, and GeoExt—is being offered at a significantly discounted rate of $900 per student.

Learn more about OpenGeo training and, if interested, please contact us for details and registration.

We at OpenGeo are proud to be visible members of various open source communities and make it a priority to attend many conferences and sprints throughout the year. You’ve probably seen us recently at Where 2.0 or GeoWeb and will see a lot of us at FOSS4G this year. In addition to the usual GIS conferences though, we’ve decided to do some proselytizing and bring our message of an open geospatial web to SXSW. If you want to help, please vote for our panels on the SXSW Panel Picker.

Beyond Google Maps: The Open Source Geospatial Web

For the web developers in the crowd, we’ve proposed a panel to introduce open source alternatives to Google Maps and address how open software, standards, and data provide a foundation on which web developers can build spatially aware applications. If accepted, the panel will  feature:

• Paul Ramsey, geospatial rockstar and major force behind PostGIS
• Tim Schaub, a core contributor and steering committee chair of OpenLayers, and co-founder of GeoExt
• Justin Deoliveira, a charter member of the Open Source GeoSpatial Foundation, lead developer on GeoServer, and contributor to GeoTools and uDig
• Sebastian Benthall, core committer to GeoExt

Government 2.0: Towards an Open Geospatial Web

Chris Holmes also hopes to give a talk exploring how software can create architectures of participation that reduce costs to government while increasing transparency and liberating data for public consumption across the web. You can learn more about his previous speaking engagements on his OpenGeo biography.

Paul Ramsey’s post about James Dixon’s beekeeper model got me thinking about how OpenGeo adds value to open source software through our design work. Paul summarizes the beekeeper model like so:

The open source community is the bee hive. The company provides care for the hive, and processes the results into the kinds of products that customers expect. In open source, as with bees, customers are not really interested in the details of production (they may even find it kind of frightening), but they are interested in the final product.

The problem with this model, as Paul points out, is that customers don’t perceive the value in the non-software activities, like design.

In fact, design is one of the important ways OpenGeo adds value. A lot of our design work falls under what Dixon calls “bee care” and involves investing resources in user experience. We do this by spearheading new user interfaces, as we did with GeoServer 2.0; actively developing new frameworks, as we are doing with GeoExt; or simply by creating common collateral for projects to consume, like the GeoSilk icon set used in both GeoServer 2.0 and GeoExt.

At the OSGeo Hacking event in Bolsena in 2008, for example, our team worked with other developers to make the GeoServer administrative interface more appealing to new users. While the GeoServer 2.0 user interface would not have resulted without the hard work of a committed community of developers, we like to think that our design work—the user experience work we did in anticipation of the event, the many sessions we had with developers in Bolsena to refine those ideas, and the web design work contributed by Chris Patterson (of The Open Planning Project, our parent organization)—went a long way towards making GeoServer 2.0 an even more appealing option for people looking to to run a solid geospatial stack with as little hassle as possible.

Similarly, we have been hard at work fleshing out GeoExt, particularly though work on an application library called GeoExplorer. Our goal is to have users be as comfortable in our GeoExt-based web applications as they are with their favorite desktop applications. To that end, we’ve researched precedents and use cases, laid out guidelines for consistent metaphors and interactions, and incorporated our standard icons. Many of these efforts are already evident in core GeoExt components. We hope that by developing GeoExt into a framework for user-friendly web-based GIS applications it can become the foundation not just for our future work, but for much of the geospatial web.

So, while some wonder why  anyone would pay for free software, remember that it takes time and money to make software usable and beautiful. Investing in design is just one of the ways that OpenGeo ensures that the honey stays sweet.