Justin Deoliveira wrote: > Hi Dolf, > > Dolf Andringa wrote: >> Dear geonetwork and geoserver developers, >> >> This email is cross-posted to both lists since I think it concerns both >> projects, I hope people do not mind cross-posting, if so, I apologize >> beforehand. >> >> Lately I have been walking around with the idea to setup a geodata >> sharing portal for a couple of NGO's in a natureconservation project. >> Right now this project would only encompass use by a few NGO's, but I >> have also had the idea of setting something similar up for use by >> individuals and NGO's in general. >> >> Geonetwork and geoserver, combined with PostGIS come in very well in >> this project. Geonetwork is great in searching through and recording >> metadata and geoserver is great at providing access to the actual data. >> For storing new geodatasets (not metadata) though, geonetwork has >> limited functionality in the form of uploading files and linking to >> sources with the metadata, and geoserver provides this functionality (as >> far as I can see) with a server/data administrator in mind who will >> setup the dataset, tables, etc. What I was looking for, and did not >> find, was a more user oriented way to upload geodata (zipped >> gml/shp/geotiff/kml files, etc) which is then converted to and stored in >> a common backend (postgis/file based), together with it's metadata. My >> first question is: Am i overlooking functionality provided by either >> geoserver or geonetwork? > Well GeoServer has a restful configuration api which allows one to > upload certain types of files and have them configured on the fly. It > supports shapefile, geotiff, and some other raster formats, no gml or > kml at this point. > > Also, no conversion to another format takes place. If you upload a > shapefile it will get served from a shapefile. Here are the docs if you > are interested: > > http://docs.geoserver.org/1.7.x/user/extensions/rest/
Note that a bit of initial funding for the rest api was to enable integration between GeoServer and GeoNetwork. We are still hoping to do that, but it's going to take some more funding. We probably should jointly make a funding prospectus to pass around, as I don't think it should take _too_ much effort, and would be a big win for both projects. We should be halfway there with the GeoServer REST API. What we've discussed in the past is making it so the service metadata (keywords, abstract, etc) in GeoServer syncs with the full metadata from GeoNetwork - so you could edit in either place and have it be reflected in the other. The other big win is hooking up GeoNetworks shapefile/geotiff upload to be in GeoServer. With the GS Rest API this is possible, just need to put hooks in GeoNetwork. The final piece is to let the user edit the style through GeoNetwork, in an embedded GeoExt Styler widget, a scaled down version of the 'Styler' app we've been working on: http://projects.opengeo.org/styler We've also been working on some ideas to better tracker data related metadata, hopefully should get a bit of funding soon, see http://geoserver.org/display/GEOS/User+Collaboration and http://geoserver.org/display/GEOS/User+Collaboration+web+pages Ideally the users we have there are the same as GeoNetwork users (and we have some ideas on how to hook up the two systems), and GeoNetwork can access the tagging/rating/commenting/access metadata, and indeed allow input to it as well. >> I was discussing this with Tyler Mitchell and wildintellect (a.k.a. >> Alex) on the #osgeo irc channel. Tyler told me he was thinking of >> developing this type of application and mentioned a concern he already >> addressed: Apart from the normal metadata as defined in the ISO >> standards supported by geonetwork, he also wanted to quickly access more >> data oriented metadata like number of layers, srs, type of features, >> number of features, etc. >> Tyler already wrote a python script which reads datasets through >> OGR/GDAL and stores this kind of data in an xml file (see >> http://spatialguru.com/ideas/data_cataloguing_background and >> http://spatialguru.com/code/xml_catalogue_format). >> My idea now is to extend on that script to provide a python interface >> which can be tied to any frontend (webbased or other) to upload and >> store geodata in a common backend, and generate the xml file for storage >> somewhere as well. Tyler and wildintellect were interested in this for >> inclusion in other python based webapplications. I on the other hand >> would like to use geonetwork and geoserver and would prefer such >> functionality to be provided from the webinterface of either of them and >> combined with their own functionality. >> I thought of a solution to this problem since both are written in java: >> Jython has a compiler which allows python code to be compiled to java >> bytecode which can be used in any java app. >> Interesting. I suppose that xml file format could be one output of a nice rest api, but I was more imagining specific rest api calls to get at that information. You could just query geoserver if you wanted the number of layers, number of features, access and rating statistics, etc. But I think already a decent amount of that is already part of WFS specification. Sorry if we're talking at cross purposes, I'm having trouble imagining what exactly the web interface you're talking about looks like and does. >> My second question is: would either of your projects consider including >> java bytecode which was generated from the jython compiler and written >> in python, as a plugin or in the base application which provides this >> functionality, and would you then like a contribution to your projects >> in the form of additions in the interface which leverages this >> functionality? I would be very happy to invest time in doing both the >> development of the python part and also contributing directly to >> geoserver or geonetwork. >> > Hmmm... not really. We have thought about adding a scripting environment > to geoserver, but this is really just an idea at this point. So the > ability to "Script" geoserver via a language like jython, groovy, etc... > > The first steps (imo) would be to investigate and prototype how > geoservers plays with jython. Would be run geoserver directly in jython? > Would be embeed some jython scripts in geoserver, etc... > I think it may be easier than that. I think you could just make a community module that includes jython as a dependency, and then ships with the compiled jython bytecode. Like I don't think we need to include a scripting language, or have GeoServer run in jython. In my understanding jython is just a jar that runs on the jvm. But yeah, it will take some investigating, but I think it should be possible to make GeoServer modules that are built with jython and run on the GeoServer platform. You just need to figure out how to get plugins and the dispatcher to route requests in the right way. See http://geoserver.org/display/GEOSDOC/3+A+Simple+PlugIn best regards, Chris >> Thanks in advance for your thoughts and opinions. > > Thanks for your interest, very cool stuff. >> Cheers, >> >> Dolf Andringa. >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> Register Now for Creativity and Technology (CaT), June 3rd, NYC. CaT >> is a gathering of tech-side developers & brand creativity professionals. Meet >> the minds behind Google Creative Lab, Visual Complexity, Processing, & >> iPhoneDevCamp as they present alongside digital heavyweights like Barbarian >> Group, R/GA, & Big Spaceship. http://p.sf.net/sfu/creativitycat-com >> _______________________________________________ >> Geoserver-devel mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/geoserver-devel > > -- Chris Holmes OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org Expert service straight from the developers. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ OpenSolaris 2009.06 is a cutting edge operating system for enterprises looking to deploy the next generation of Solaris that includes the latest innovations from Sun and the OpenSource community. Download a copy and enjoy capabilities such as Networking, Storage and Virtualization. Go to: http://p.sf.net/sfu/opensolaris-get _______________________________________________ Geoserver-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/geoserver-devel
