Wednesday, May 19, 2010

uDig 1.2 Release Candidate 3

The uDig 1.2 development is complete and we are pleased to offer uDig 1.2 RC4 for download. This release is made in conjunction with GeoTools 2.6.4.

The uDig 1.2-RC3 is available from the main download page (previous releases are also available).

Installation

Download the package appropriate to your platform, unzip and run:

Windows and Linux packages includes a Java Runtime so you really can unzip and run without making any configuration changes to your Machine. On Mac OSX uDig is able to check for Java Advanced Imaging and install if needed.

To get started with uDig:


About uDig 1.2 Release Candidate 3

The release adds three amazing new features:

  • Access to GeoTools DataStores via a generic wizard allowing users to connect to many additional data formats and access all connection parameters.
  • One long standing difficulty with using large datasets is uDig wanting to know the bounds of the data (so it can efficiently search, zoom etc…). For common spatial file formats this data is known and available; for large databases such as DB2 and PostgreSQL this can take some time to calculate. For the generic GeoTools DataStore wizard above we are experimenting with using bounds based simply on the valid area for coordinate reference system provided by the data.
  • The valid area of the coordinate reference system is also used when "clipping" WFS requests resolving some long standing issues when editing WFS services that do not update their Capabilities document.
  • Advanced: Control what features are requested for a layer using a Common Query Language (CQL) expression. The expression builder offers command completion with the full GeoTools function list available as you type
  • Experimental: Cache support added allowing you to cache WFS layers in memory for increased performance (please be careful when working with large datasets as this is the first time uDig is allowing users to cache data in memory)

Additional documentation for developers:

Release Notes:

Sub-task

  • [UDIG-1632] - IFeaturePanel class and Extension Point

Bug

  • [UDIG-1520] - unable to connect WMS with Udig
  • [UDIG-1553] - axios plugin edittools
  • [UDIG-1578] - OracleGeoResource keeps its own IService
  • [UDIG-1587] - Adding WMS service via wizard fails.
  • [UDIG-1612] - Bluemarble tif not displayed
  • [UDIG-1629] - PostGIS next() called before hasNext()
  • [UDIG-1633] - Cannot resolve PostGIS layer to JDBCDataStore
  • [UDIG-1638] - Marker size defaults to 6
  • [UDIG-1639] - Table show selection does nothing
  • [UDIG-1641] - RenderContextImpl fails when MapViewer not shown yet
  • [UDIG-1642] - Cant edit PostGIS line feature in 1.2-rc2
  • [UDIG-1650] - Add transparency support for default Image format image/png8

Improvement

  • [UDIG-1631] - Move public documentation to public svn
  • [UDIG-1634] - Break ICatalog up into ISearch and IRepository and check interface boundaries
  • [UDIG-1647] - Add visual queues to information tool layer list
  • [UDIG-1648] - Change Coordinate System: Set focus to Search field
  • [UDIG-1655] - Allow user to change layer filter
  • [UDIG-1656] - FeatureInterceptor for creation of default values
  • [UDIG-1657] - Service and GeoResource Interceptors

New Feature

  • [UDIG-1658] - Generic GeoTools DataStore support
  • [UDIG-1659] - Relaxing requirement to know bounds
  • [UDIG-1660] - User control of Feature Caching
  • [UDIG-1661] - Filter layer content with "query builder"

Known problems:

  • The mac release is unable to support the full range of ImageIO-EXT formats. Please contact udig-devel if you are able to build GDAL on Mac OSX.
  • WIn64 download does not include a JRE at this time

About uDig 1.2 Series

The uDig 1.2 series highlights a lot really great ideas the developer community has been working on. We have migrated to a modern version of the GeoTools library - bringing in five years of new developments in standard support, and a host of new raster and vector formats. An exciting addition is the use of the ImageIO-ext project allowing the use of raster formats supported by GDAL.

New and capabilities of uDig 1.2 include:

  • ImageIO-EXT rendering enabling additional raster formats and working with images larger then memory
  • Tiled rendering (as an option in preferences) with a new flicker free panning tool.
  • Support for GeoWebCache and TileServer via WMS-C
  • WFS 1.1.0 support
  • Greatly improved ArcSDE support; multithreaded and faster
  • Advanced Symbology including Hatches and True Type Font support

Monday, May 10, 2010

Reusing Existent Spatial Operations

Recently, we have published a tutorial which could be interesting for those developers who want to integrate existent proceses in uDig framework.

This tutorial uses the Spatial Operation Framework, developed under the auspices of Gipuzkoa Provincial Council, Mobility and Land Planning Department, and Sextante, promoted by Spanish autonomous region of Extremadura.

As platform we use uDig 1.2 and Spatial Operations 1.3.

To download, visit our web site www.axios.es and select Tutorials and Documents.

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Google Summer of Code 2010

In two weeks time the Google Summer of Code for 2010 starts, and this year uDig is taking part with an exciting project riding the current NoSQL wave, one of the hottest topics concerning databases in a long time.
Davide Savazzi, a student at the Università degli Studi di Pavia, Italy, and an experienced GIS developer, is doing a project titled 'Adding support for Neo4j graph database in Geotools and uDIG'. We are particularly excited to have Davide involved in this project because he has already made core contributions to the underlying 'Neo4j Spatial' project, which is building GIS capabilities into the graph database itself.

Introduction

Geographic vector data is naturally structured like a graph, network and topological analyses view GIS data as graphs, but so far no-one has tried to make use of a real graph database as the backing store for a GIS.

Neo4j is a new open source database that stores data as a graph, in the mathematical sense of nodes connected by relationships, with both nodes and relationships storing properties as key-value pairs.

The goals of the project are:
  • extend Neo4j graph database with spatial indexing and query functions.
  • enable GIS application developers working on either or both Geotools and uDIG to use Neo4j as a true spatial database.
  • enable GIS users working with uDIG to perform spatial analyses better or faster than normal.

Roadmap

At the highest level, the project will take the following phases:
  • define the best approach to store spatial data in Neo4j graph database
  • create spatial indexing and query functions for Neo4j
  • create a Geotools DataStore that can read and write spatial data contained in Neo4j
  • add a Catalog to uDIG for this new DataStore
  • add persistence support to Geotools graph module through Neo4j
  • prototype a plugin in uDIG for network / routing analyses

Further reading

Here are a few links worth investigating, for those of you interested in some background on this subject:Once the project starts we will post status updates and further information.