In our last post on clustering, we talked about the theory behind some different options for clustering. In this post, we’ll go into an example of clustering, taken from our recent experience with one of our OpenGeo Suite Enterprise clients. If you’ll be attending FOSS4G-NA and want to learn more about clustering and GeoServer consider attending our GeoServer training and Juan Marin’s GeoServer in Production presentation (scheduled for 5/23/2013 at 11:30 am).

Clustering Scenario

In this following scenario, we will work through the installation and configuration of two GeoServers each inside their own servlet container instances on the same machine. Each servlet container will use the same JRE and the same container binaries (Apache Tomcat 7), but they will have independent configurations that allow them to run on different ports. These two GeoServer/Tomcat instances will be fronted by a local software proxy called HAProxy which acts as a HTTP/TCP load balancer. Load balancer configurations provide very basic “round robin” balancing of GeoServers. More sophisticated load-balancing configurations are possible, but are beyond the scope of this example. All GeoServers will be deployed as WAR files placed into each of the Tomcat webapps directories. It is possible to have multiple instances of Tomcat share a single web-application through the use of contexts. This is useful if you anticipate your web-application (GeoServer) will be changed/updated frequently, but isn’t necessary. Read the rest of this entry »

I spent last week in Boston, attending an annual code sprint for C-based open source geospatial projects.  I’ve been doing this every year since 2008.  Since getting back, I’ve had to explain the event to several people, technical and non-technical, since the concept isn’t obvious at all.

Open source development of characterized by some features that differ a great deal from traditional work environments:

• the developers work asynchronously, often in different time zones, usually in different locations,
• the developers coordinate exclusively using text tools, like e-mail, issue tracking systems, and sometimes instant messaging

Because there is no need to be in the same space with other developers, either physically or even temporally, the barriers to entry to a project are lowered. More people can participate than otherwise.

However, there are disadvantages to working asynchronously and with text communications.

• asking for help when you get stuck can be time consuming, because your colleagues might be asleep at the moment when help would be most useful
• issues of subtlety or complexity take a great deal of text to describe, and any misunderstandings on the part of a reader take even more text to correct
• discussion of emotional issues can lead to conflict due to the limited emotional nuance in text communication

A code sprint is a chance to work for a time with your open source colleagues “the old fashioned way”, face to face, on the same clock.

Because everyone is together, and communications are high-bandwidth and high-fidelity, a code sprint is a great time for:

• planning and designing large scale changes to the code
• designing new APIs or new user interfaces, and
• triaging ticket lists to prepare for release

I usually spend the first half of a sprint on communication-heavy tasks like the ones above. The second half I usually spend heads down on a hard piece of code.

If the right experts are around, code sprints are an excellent time to attack a new piece of code you don’t quite understand. Learning how a module works from the expert who wrote it is far faster than doing it alone at home.

And finally, having lunch and dinner and socializing usually provide the social space for unexpected topics to slip out and get a discussion, whether they be uncomfortable issues like dealing with a difficult team member or just a crazy feature idea that turns out to be not so crazy at all when discussed with the group.

If you have a chance to participate in a code sprint on a project you contribute to, don’t pass it up!

We always look forward to opportunities to get together with our friends, colleagues and clients to discuss what’s new in geospatial technology. The FOSS4G conferences of recent years have consistently offered the best opportunity to do just that; that’s one reason why we’re so excited about this year’s FOSS4G North America conference.

Last year we had a pretty big hand in organizing the inaugural DC conference, the event went so well that it’s become an annual event. This year we’ve stepped back from the day-to-day planning but we’re still helping out on the program committee, and we’re happy to support the conference as gold sponsors.

We’ll be sending a pretty large contingent to Minneapolis; nine OpenGeo presentations were accepted and we’ll be teaching four workshops. We’re looking forward to an exciting (and busy!) week and hope to see you there. Don’t forget to register to attend; we hear spots are filling up quickly. And if you’ll be in Minneapolis make sure to come by our exhibition table, you never know who you’ll run into.

Interested in hearing us speak? Want to enroll in a workshop? The preliminary program has been announced and the times and dates of specific talks will be posted soon. Scroll down to see list of what we’ll be up to at FOSS4G-NA:

OpenGeo FOSS4G-NA Presentations (Marriott City Center in Minneapolis, MN)

• GeoServer CSS: David Winslow
• Say Hello to OpenLayers 3: Tim Schaub & Eric Lemoine of Camptocamp
• OpenLayers 3: Vectors Redux: Tim Schaub & Andreas Hocevar
• Scripting GeoServer with GeoScript: Tim Schaub
• LIDAR in PostgreSQL with PointCloud: Paul Ramsey
• GeoServer in Production: Juan Marin
• State of GeoServer: Justin Deoliveira
• PostGIS Feature Frenzy: Paul Ramsey
• Diversity in FOSS4G Mailing List: An Analysis: Alyssa Wright & Georgia Bullen of the Open Technology Institute

OpenGeo FOSS4G-NA Workshops (University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, MN)

• Introduction to PostGIS, Paul Ramsey
• GeoNode, the Open source Geospatial CMS, Ian Schneider
• OpenLayers Application Development, Tim Schaub
• Introduction to GeoServer, Sam Smith

I was recently presented with a fantastic opportunity; my manager approached me and asked:

“Hey Ian, what do you think about leading a GeoNode training in the Caribbean?”

Without hesitation, or asking for details I said, “Sign me up!”  Though my manager’s smirk should have tipped me off I had no idea how challenging the assignment would be. Nor did I realize that I would find the trip rewarding in ways other than what one typically thinks when that sunny, sandy, pina colada filled, cerulean-hued region of the world is mentioned.

The training was a part of the OpenDRI initiative and took place Feb 18-23 at the St. Augustine Campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI) in Trinidad and Tobago. The event, co-sponsored by the World Bank, the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), and the University of West Indies, brought together 40 GIS specialists and developers from around the Caribbean to provide them with the skills needed to better use, integrate, and extend GeoNode as a component of their specific spatial data infrastructure.

I lead a developer workshop in which 13 participants learned to install and configure GeoNode, create a custom “project”, theme it, and add new functionality related to security. We also threw in an unexpected (read: bonus) section on virtual networking (we used a
VirtualBox appliance and ran into potential problems related to running a
server with a changing IP address). In addition to my inane jokes, I shared all of my bash shortcuts and Python programming tips.

In the evening, there were discussions and presentations on topics such as OpenStreetMap, OpenDataKit, and NASA’s Pilot DRM Program. I’ll miss all of the fantastic Trinidadian food (chokas, coconut bake, roti, buss-up-shut and saltfish to name a few), along with the great people I met. Unfortunately I didn’t allot enough time to enjoy much of island but will look back on my one free afternoon in Maracas Bay fondly.

My special thanks to the World Bank, the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), and the University of West Indies for bringing me down. If you’re interested in such a training, or just want to fly me to nice sunny places please let us know!

Today we’re sitting down with Jeff Johnson, OpenGeo developer extraordinaire and Code For America San Diego Brigade Captain. Jeff is a talented entrepreneur who has his hands in a bit of everything at OpenGeo, but is largely focused on GeoNode. Today we’ll be sitting down to discuss his recent work with Code For America.

David Dubovsky: Hey Jeff, thanks for taking the time to talk.
Jeff Johnson: I’m happy to do so.

DD: So how long have you been involved with Code For America, and how did you get involved?
JJ: Well about two years ago I was introduced to a local group called OpenSanDiego. We stood up some apps with OpenGeo tools (specifically GeoNode) to make county GIS data easier to access. I got involved because I was (and still am) dissatisfied with the applications that are stood up by our local Joint Powers Agency (SANDAG) and I thought we could do better with the data they provide.

A year later the city held an Apps Competition, and they ended up using one of the apps we setup as the data catalog of record for that competition. And then at the 2012 Code Across America event we set up a few more apps. At that point Code for America asked OpenSanDiego group to join their Brigade program and we did so happily. I was named ‘captain” of our brigade.

DD: Congratulations on the success of OpenSanDiego and being named brigade captain. Can you give us a little detail about some of the projects you’ve worked on, or are working on?
JJ: Currently we’re working on a few different projects. Including:

• eCitizens.org, a scrape, aggregate and alert system for local government documents that allows citizens to subscribe to keywords and get notified when those are mentioned in local government meetings and documents. We based its architecture on the Sunlight Foundations OpenStates and Scout projects.
• Another project we’re working on is the San Diego regional data library, which we aim to eventually federate with cities.data.gov.
• We’re also looking into helping with the City of San Diego’s Participatory Infrastructure Budgeting Program that was piloted last year and will be taken operational this year. This one is a big challenge for the city. There’s a good deal of cross cutting concerns about inclusiveness, aggregating the data, making it useful etc. I think that many of the OpenGeo tools could potentially be brought to bear on this problem.

DD: It sounds like you’re all very busy making progress on a lot of projects. Can you tell me a little bit about the event you recently hosted?
JJ: As apart of a second annual Code Across America event (held in 22 cities across the country, and coinciding with International OpenData Day) we hosted a local instance in San Diego. These events are usually hackathons (or code sprints, as most developers prefer to call them), but we ended up spending much more time building and growing relationships with our local open government and open data community.

There was representation from the San Diego Mayors office of Open Government and Civic Engagement and by staff members from the Councilmember’s office who chairs the infrastructure committee that is responsible for the CIP program. There were also attendees from our Community Planning Council and from a few different city agencies. Because of the unique attendance breakdown (non-developers outnumbered developers) we ended up having a code sprint where zero lines of code were written! To really build and deploy sustainable solutions in Local Government we need to build this support. All in all, it was not what I had planned or expected, but I think it turned out better this way.

DD: And did this event result in you speaking in front of the city council?
JJ: It was actually the aforementioned Council Infrastructure Committee chaired by Councilman Mark Kersey of the 5th district. His committee is tasked with dealing with Rebuilding and Improving San Diego’s Infrastructure.

I spoke in favor of an agenda item to create a community input policy for the cities Capital Improvement Project, a roughly $200M/year budget for making infrastructure improvements. Last year the City undertook a pilot project to solicit public input on this budget, which ended up being a seminal effort in participatory budgeting. Our CfA brigade would love to be involved in the operationalization of this policy by bringing together existing open source projects such as See Penny Work (created by Jessica Lord, Code America Fellow) and by using apps like Shareabouts (which is developed by OpenPlans, OpenGeo’s parent organization) to crowd source community input.

DD: Can you outline what you told them for us?
JJ:  One of the key things that I explained is that implementing sustainable civic technology solutions that address problems and improve citizen engagement is really a four-step process. First groups like ours must build credibility within local government, then look for champions, then find problems that we can solve and only then can you implement and deploy solutions.

There’s actually a fifth step that I did not mention, which is to make sure these solutions are sustainable. As technologists, I feel that we often focus on the third and fourth steps and neglect the others. My public comment was intended to really start working on the first and second steps such that we can make sure that we really nail it on the last one.

My primary reason for speaking was to explain what CfA is, and offer the  larger group, as well as our local brigade as a resource for Councilmember Kersey’s committee as they move forward with creating and then implementing a Community Input Policy on this CIP budget.

At OpenGeo we’re committed to helping IT professionals break out of the traditional “GIS” workflow. Our goal is not to recreate desktop GIS on the web; but to bring “spatial” into the broader IT ecosystem. One way we’re doing this are with tools like GeoScript, and by bringing processing into our platform with OGC’s Web Processing Service (WPS) specification. By combining WPS and GeoScript, a web developer can create processes that perform complex analyses using familiar scripting languages like Python or JavaScript. This enables IT professionals to build Web applications that can run spatial processes against data stored anywhere using standard web development practices.

Read more about these tools after the break. And if you’d still like to find out more about GeoScript, through the web processing with the OpenGeo Suite, or anything else ‘open’ or ‘geo’ consider attending FedGeo Day this Thursday, 2/28/2013 in Washington, DC. I’ll be speaking about these topics at 1:30pm, it would be great to see you there.

Read the rest of this entry »

OpenGeo is proud to sponsor FedGeo Day, the new conference on modern, open source geospatial tools being used in and around the federal government. Earlier this week the conference schedule was announced, it’s going to be a busy day filled with interesting case studies, panel discussions and technology showcases. For more details take a look at the full schedule, it’s all happening on February 28 in Washington, DC.

We’re looking forward to seeing case studies on how these tools are currently be used, and the discussions on where they are going in the future. We’re also excited to hear from agencies that have been making the shift to open source technology, and why they’ve chosen to do so. Be on the look out for presentations from the DNC, NOAA, NGA, The Department of State, The National Park Service and more. We’ll be listening closely during the panel discussion on how federal geodata needs to change to better serve the public, as well as the panel on challenges of, and successful strategies to, deploying open source geospatial tools in the federal space.

There will also be interactive demos that explore specific open source tools and applications, our talks include:

• Eddie Pickle will present on the OpenGeo vision and the future state of open source geospatial tools in the government.
• Alyssa Wright will be showing attendees how to take your geospatial deployments to the next level with OpenGeo’s brand new enterprise console.
• Ilya Rosenfeld will be demonstrating new server-side processing (WPS) functionality–which allows you to do more than ever with the OpenGeo Suite–and discuss how these advances are altering the landscape for ‘traditional’ GIS,

We hope you’ll join us to find out more about these new and exciting geospatial tools. To register visit fedgeoday.eventbrite.com. More details on the schedule and event specifics are at fedgeoday.com. You can follow conference news by subscribing to @fed_geo on Twitter.

Last week registration opened for FedGeo Day, a one-day conference being held on February 28 in Washington, DC. The event offers a platform for those who work in or with federal agencies to share their experiences with modern open source geospatial technologies.

We’re looking forward to seeing case studies of how these tools are being used in government, what benefits they bring, and why so many agencies are shifting to open source technology. There will also be interactive demos that explore specific open source tools and applications. The agenda will be particularly attractive for those for those who make technology decisions within the federal government. OpenGeo will be presenting how the advances to server-side processing (added to the OpenGeo Suite in the 3.0 release) are altering the landscape for ‘traditional’ GIS.

OpenGeo and MapBox are acting the primary organizers and we thank RadiantBlue, MapStory, GeoEye, and Arc2Earth for joining us in sponsoring the event. A full schedule will be available soon at fedgeoday.com. Sign up now to reserve your spot, as space is limited.

This year GIS Day fell on Wednesday, November 14, which means that today is PostGIS Day! How are you celebrating? At OpenGeo we’re spending time with one of our newest clients, Washington University. Today in St. Louis, superstar trainer Sam Smith will be kicking off our relationship with Washington University by leading various sessions on open source geospatial technology and OpenGeo Suite training for students and staff.  If you’re not lucky enough to work or attend Washington University we’d like to offer all educators and students a special PostGIS day rate for our online training courses. If you’re interested contact us with a valid .edu email address and we’ll set you up with a discount off the listed prices.

We know that many higher education institutions have recognized that open source geospatial software not only outperforms proprietary alternatives by many measures, but learning it has become a critical job skill students are expected to have acquired. We saw this first hand at the 2012 AAG Annual Meeting where we met a handful of forward thinking educators who told us that they were actively adding web mapping and open source technology courses to their curriculums. It was a great opportunity to speak with students and educators committed to working with open source geospatial tools. We think that this enthusiasm will only grow and are eager to see GIS courses focus an increasing amount of lecture time on open source geospatial software.

If you work at a college or university and are interested in finding out how an OpenGeo academic support contract can assist you with your teaching and research goals send us a note to start a discussion.

Happy PostGIS day!

At OpenGeo we’re often asked if we offer training courses for the open source projects we support. While we often host workshops at conferences like FOSS4G, and provide training to our Enterprise clients we haven’t regularly offered public training.

Today we’re happy to announce that we now offer online training courses for the components of the OpenGeo Suite. Our initial line-up features classes on GeoServer, PostGIS and how the OpenGeo Suite excels in Hybrid Architectures. Each course has a different set of prerequisites, but most students would benefit by running through an introductory workshop. Below is our current schedule:

• Advanced GeoServer Training, Tuesday, November 19^th, 2012 1:00pm est
  Looking to get more out of your GeoServer? Join us for a web-based training that will teach you how to use a number of advanced features in GeoServer, including using the REST API for programmatic control of your configuration, data filtering with CQL, time and elevation in WMS, spatial processing with WPS, on the fly rendering transformations for advanced visualizations and more.

• Hybrid Architectures Tuesday, January 08th, 2013 1:00pm est
  In today’s fast moving IT environment, hybrid architectures are critical. The OpenGeo Suite is designed from the ground up to adapt to your infrastructure. Join this web-based training to learn a variety of methods to adapt components of the OpenGeo Suite to improve the capabilities of your existing spatial stack

• Spatial Analysis with PostGIS, Tuesday, January 22nd, 2013 1:00pm est
  Discover the power of PostGIS, the most widely used spatial database. In this class you will learn techniques to solve complex spatial problems with a single line of SQL. Topics include loading data, basic SQL syntax, indexing, spatial relationships, joins and projections.

Check our website for updates, we will be adding more dates as in the future. We hope that you’ll find these courses valuable and look forward to seeing you there.