Hi
We are developing a Network Facility Management application with Geo-Server and PostGIS. We display a factory layout as the background or coverage. Over that we overlay layers consisting of positions of various network devices at various points and their area of coverages and stuff. This is the overall idea of our app. Now our UI should contain the Map (powered by OpenLayers) as well as some custom UI components How do I do this. Should I override GeoServer’s WMS, WFS lifcycles and insert my custom components in the response in addition to the default response generated by GeoServer. Or should the entire logic be in the client JavaScript i.e. Openlayers. How do I go about this. Any help is greatly apreciated.
Thanks
ganesh
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Ganesh Jothikumar ha scritto:
Hi
We are developing a Network Facility Management application with Geo-Server and PostGIS. We display a factory layout as the background or coverage. Over that we overlay layers consisting of positions of various network devices at various points and their area of coverages and stuff. This is the overall idea of our app. Now our UI should contain the Map (powered by OpenLayers) as well as some custom UI components How do I do this. Should I override GeoServer's WMS, WFS lifcycles and insert my custom components in the response in addition to the default response generated by GeoServer. Or should the entire logic be in the client JavaScript i.e. Openlayers. How do I go about this. Any help is greatly apreciated.
Hi,
I'm having some trouble understanding why you need to override the WMS
and WFS lifecycle, but anyways, I'd suggest against doing so.
In general, any modification you do on your copy of GeoServer without
donating it back to the standard distribution will sooner or later
backfire on you in many ways:
* if you want to sell that modified GeoServer, you'll have to comply
to the GPL, and thus provide all sources of your work too (this may
or may not be a problem depending on how you do business).
Anyways, if you do alter GeoServer, always
remember to distribute the modified source along with the binary
or you'll violate the license in its most fundamental request
* if you end up in troubles because of the modifications, nobody will
be able to help you unless you contract out some of the developers
* most importantly, GeoServer will keep on evolving and you'll
end up chasing the standard version as we improve and bug fix it.
The internals of GeoServer are not a public API so we don't feel
compelled about not changing them, we usually only care about
not breaking significantly the major extension points (services,
output formats).
So my suggestion is to try and build cleanly over GeoServer. You
may do so at various level:
* doing everything in javascript if the customization does not require
heavy lifting (such as data processing or big volume data management)
* creating your solution as a mix of javascript and server side code,
where your server side code talks to GeoServer directly
* creating a new service in GeoServer itself working against the
major extension points we're less likely to change, this is especially
compelling if you need direct access to the GeoServer catalog
or if you need to do a lot of processing and you require direct
access to the data store. Beware, with this solution your module
will be bound to the GPL (which does not mean you have to give the
sources to us, it just means you have to distribute the sources
each time you distribute the GeoServer with your module).
If you feel the need for a commercial license of GeoServer that's not
bound to the GPL we're setting it up, you may want to talk with Chris
Holmes to see about timings for its availability (before people panic,
the GPL version is going to stay there, the commercial option will
be just that, an option for those that really cannot take the GPL
version and feel like funding the community by buying a commercial license).
Cheers
Andrea