OpenGeo

The OpenGeo Suite team has released version 2.1.3 of the OpenGeo Suite Community Edition. This version is primarily a bug fix release, but does sport some nifty improvements.

Control flow is now included in GeoServer. This extension allows for the ability to control the amount of concurrent requests executing inside the server. This can improve performance and utilize resources more efficiently.

In addition, GeoExplorer now sports an improved Print Preview dialog, and the Dashboard has some more helpful notifications.

The Community Edition is free to use but is unsupported. Feel free to use the OpenGeo Community Forum to share your questions and tips with the community.

So give the OpenGeo Suite a try. If you’re already running an older version of the OpenGeo Suite, it’s easy to upgrade to get the latest features. Just download and run the new version, and your data and settings will be preserved.

OpenGeo is committed to making tools for simple, fast, and reliable mapping and are happy to announce the OpenGeo Suite Cloud Edition, a pre-configured cloud deployment of the OpenGeo Suite.

The OpenGeo Suite Cloud Edition comes in three different flavors to meet different industry needs.

• Experiment with the latest features of the OpenGeo Suite with the Community Cloud Edition—perfect for developer prototypes.
• Remove the risks of enterprise GIS with our pre-optimized Enterprise Cloud Edition package.  Security and scalability features combine with software and infrastructure support.
• Enjoy the flexibility  of a customized infrastructure with our Enterprise Auto-Scaling Cloud Edition package.  On-demand scaling allows organizations to efficiently process large and cyclical datasets.

We offer these editions in partnership with Skygone, a leader in high-performance GIS cloud infrastructures. For more information about pricing and deployment, visit our GIS marketplace.

Last month, we released the OpenGeo Suite Enterprise Edition 2.0. Today we bring Community Edition users up to date with the latest 2.0 features, as well as a number of experimental new ones, with the OpenGeo Suite Community Edition 2.1.0.

GeoExplorer now includes a printing feature. With a simple export to PDF you can now impress your offline friends and your mom’s refrigerator. Another GeoExplorer improvement includes version 3 of the Google Maps API.  You no longer need an API key in order to host maps with Google layers on your site. And for design aficionados, Styler now preserves GeoServer SLD vendor options. We also fixed bugs around GeoWebCache layer groups and GeoServer layer names.

With 2.1.0 there is a lot more than meets the eye. We invite you to try it out and let us know what you think!

You can find answers to your questions at our growing OpenGeo Suite Community Forum.  Remember, the Community Edition is free (open source and no charge), but unsupported.  If you’re going into production, you’ll definitely want the OpenGeo Suite Enterprise Edition.

In conversations with our OpenGeo Suite Enterprise Edition clients, we have more than once heard the following lament:

It’s too bad that we don’t have any hours in our contract, because we’d really like this particular bug fixed.

Luckily for them, this is a simple misunderstanding between core service (”implementation”) hours, and bug fixing hours.

Core service hours are billed time towards strategically improving the capabilities of the OpenGeo Suite in the direction you desire. This includes, but isn’t limited to, items on our roadmap (such as WMS 1.3 required for INSPIRE compliance, extra dimensionality in PostGIS, and offline editing in OpenLayers). When you sign up for an Enterprise Strategic package, this comes with 350 implementation hours that you can use as you please. Currently, this is the only package that comes with implementation hours.

Bug fixes are a different matter, however. We realize that bugs happen, so bug fixes are in everyone’s best interest. That is why we offer unlimited bug fixes on every one of our Enterprise Edition packages. Unlimited. We mean it. If you’re an Enterprise Edition client and you find a bug in our software, let us know and we’ll fix it, no questions asked (well, except for maybe a log file and the steps required to reproduce the bug).

So if you’re wondering why you should become an OpenGeo Suite Enterprise Edition client, you can add the peace of mind that comes with constantly improving software. And now you are free to lament about other things.

Since our first release of the OpenGeo Suite in January, our team has been working consistently to improve and refine the software. Much of this was based on feedback from our users, leading us to create a Community Forum where users can share their ideas and solutions. We have been periodically releasing a free Community Edition of the OpenGeo Suite, both as a testing environment for new features, and as a way for users to get the very latest in our technology.

Today, we release version 2.0 of the OpenGeo Suite Enterprise Edition. Here are just some of the many new features that comprise this software:

• Fully integrated PostGIS, including the new pgShapeLoader, a graphical shapefile loading utility.
• A new application, GeoEditor, that allows for web-based editing of geospatial features.
• New code samples and recipes to help you design your own mapping applications.
• Individualized packages of each application to integrate with an existing IT infrastructure.

And of course, all components are updated to the most recent stable version: PostGIS 1.5.1, GeoServer 2.0.2, GeoWebCache 1.2.2, and GeoExt 0.7.

With the OpenGeo Suite, you have all you need at your disposal to publish your data and maps on the web, as well as create virtually any web-based geospatial application for your organization. We hope that the new version 2.0 of the OpenGeo Suite will make your work even easier.

Register now to get your copy of the OpenGeo Suite 2.0. And please let us know what you think.

We are excited to announce the OpenGeo Suite 1.9.1 Community Edition, the latest maintenance release of our leading geospatial platform.

The 1.9.1 Edition adds stability to our previous community release, featuring:

• PostGIS is now integrated into the OpenGeo Suite install experience! You now get a complete spatial mapping stack: database, map server, tile cache, web interface.
• pgShapeLoader, a graphical interface for loading shapefiles into your PostGIS database.
• pgAdmin, a graphical interface for database administration.
• GeoEditor, a web application. GeoEditor allows for web based editing of data, regardless of the underlying data format (shapefiles, PostGIS, ArcSDE, Oracle Spatial, DB2, etc.).

The integrated installer is now available for Linux (32 bit only), as well as Mac OS X (v10.5 or later) and Windows XP/Vista/7. The Linux installer does not yet include PostGIS.

The OpenGeo Suite Community Editions are previews of future enterprise packages. Please download, contribute issues, and participate in driving the Suite’s future on our OpenGeo Suite Community Forum. And stay tuned for the Enterprise 2.0 release of the OpenGeo Suite this month.

Download OpenGeo Suite 1.9.1 Community Edition

We have been hard at work on improving the OpenGeo Suite. Part of our development process is to make interim releases available as Community Edition downloads.  These downloads are functional and ready to try out, but they could still use some more testing. Please download and try out the latest Community Edition and give us feedback on our new community forum.

And you definitely want to try out this new release. Why? Check out some of the new features:

• PostGIS is now integrated into the OpenGeo Suite install experience! You now get a complete spatial mapping stack: database, map server, tile cache, web interface. Or, in project terms: PostGIS, GeoServer, GeoWebCache, OpenLayers, GeoExt!
• pgShapeLoader, a graphical interface for loading shapefiles into your PostGIS database
• pgAdmin a graphical interface for database administration.
• GeoEditor, a web application. GeoEditor allows for web based editing of data, regardless of the underlying data format (shapefiles, PostGIS, ArcSDE, Oracle Spatial, DB2, etc.). This offers a great opportunity to integrate web based applications with traditional GIS workflows.

We currently have one-click installers available for Windows and Mac OS X. We will be adding an installer for Linux very soon.

It’s worth noting what you’re getting with the OpenGeo Suite. With a simple and quick installation, you have the functional equivalent of ArcGIS Server and Oracle Spatial.

Download the OpenGeo Suite Community Edition

We’d like you to join the large and growing community of OpenGeo Suite users. To this end, we now have a web forum for people to ask questions, get answers, and share information. The board is moderated by folks at OpenGeo. Asking a question or even leaving a comment is as simple as filling out a web form.

We hope that as our community grows, this board will become a full knowledge base where users can share tips with each other. But we need your help to get started. What would you like to see in the OpenGeo Suite? What’s great about it? What’s not so great about it? What cool projects are you doing that you want people to know about? Stop by and say hello.

OpenGeo welcomes our latest GIS intern Byron Bobadilla, a developer working on a geoportal for Guatemala’s Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI), a national initiative based on open-source GIS tools.

Ultimately, the goal is to use the philosophy and technology of the GeoNode project to build a Guatemalan resource that encourages institutions to publish spatial data on the web — enabling open sharing of data between governments, businesses, and citizens.

In our Q&A with Byron, he discusses the challenges of SDI development in Guatemala, and the advantages of using open-source tools.

What are you working on while at OpenGeo?
Constructing a new geoportal, way more efficient than the one we currently have, with the tools provided by the OpenGeo Suite. The current system, based on MapBender, is too slow and not very intuitive. This new tool—based on OpenLayers, GeoExt, GeoWebCache, GeoServer and PostGIS—hopes to solve the usability and performance issues we’ve been having.

How are you finding the OpenGeo Suite tools so far?
We’ve already implemented GeoServer in Guatemala, as well as MapServer, but found GeoServer easier to use and configure. Initially, I found it a bit difficult working with the JavaScript libraries, but the OpenGeo fellows and excellent documentation have been a great help. As for GeoWebCache, in very little time I’ve been able to work well with its configuration and setup. It makes it really simple to get an instance up and running.

What are the current challenges for Guatemala’s SDI?
The current system isn’t satisfactory. Few people know about it and the ones that do get easily lost, giving up quickly. With this new system, improvements in usability and performance allow easier and more efficient access to all the geospatial information in Guatemala. This geoportal will enable free Guatemalan spatial data  access for all institutions and the general public.

We currently have all this information spread across shapefiles and other files on disk. The information itself will be decentralized, allowing each institution to take care of the bits that they own, while simultaneously providing a single access point through SEGEPLAN [Secretaría de Programación y Planificación de la Presidencia, the Guatemalan government institution driving SDI development].”

How do open-source tools help this kind of initiative?
Open-source tools greatly facilitate access to technology. I see OpenGeo as a great alternative, especially in developing countries where access to proprietary licenses might be prohibitive due to paid software acquisition policies. I believe professional support is key. Specialists in these kinds of projects are needed, independent of the immense volume of information and documentation already available on the internet.

Byron’s internship with OpenGeo is made possible by support from the World Bank. His work with SEGEPLAN includes the development of open source GIS software, geodatabase administration tasks, and web-GIS development with PHP. Byron is a systems engineer who began working with GIS at the University of San Carlos in Guatemala.

Thanks to Gabriel Roldan for the translation of this interview.

As egregious as this self-horn-tooting is, I have to post about how enjoyable I have found using the OpenGeo Suite. It might sound odd, coming from an OpenGeo person, to “discover” the Suite at this late date but my personal reality is that I spend much of my time with PostGIS, and until recently only did short testing passes over the Suite.

But this last week, I have been revising a workshop that I will be giving with Steven Citron-Pousty at Where 2.0 this month, possibly at GeoWeb in the summer (and on my own at the Minnesota GIS/LIS conference in the fall). And included in that revision is using the OpenGeo Suite instead of vanilla GeoServer.

Among the things I’ve really enjoyed are:

• How easy the install process is. No messing around installing JDKs or JAI extension libraries.
• How clean the new UI is. Much more sensible names for things and less clicky workflow.
• The instant gratification of the Suite tools. Installer creates datastore and layers and associated styles in one go. Styler writes new SLD with a click click click.
• The little On/Off button in the Dashboard. For some reason I really like that.

The net effect of all the cleanups is I’ve removed about 6 screens of configuration boilerplate from the workshop. More time to talk concepts and scare the students with JavaScript examples!