[Geoserver-devel] PLEASE HELP - Facility Management in GeoServer

GeoServer GeoServer Developer
,
1

Hi Andrea

Thank You very much for the quick response. We really dont want to do any changes to GeoServer and we definitely understand all theGPL implications. That is for sure. Basically we want to build a solution using GeoServer. Actually we would like to do something like your proposed second solution.
* "creating your solution as a mix of javascript and server side code,
where your server side code talks to GeoServer directly"
But the problem is since we are new to GeoServer, we couldn’t find any examples or sample applications for server side code talking to GeoServer directly. It would be very helpful if you could point us to some sample app, examples, tutorials of the above solution. For eg. we want to get handle of the request and the response objects in our server side code. How to do these things. Any reference would be very helpful.

Please help us regarding this.

Thanks
ganesh

----- Original Message ----
From: Andrea Aime <aaime@anonymised.com…>
To: Ganesh Jothikumar ganeshjothikumar@anonymised.com
Cc: GeoServer Dev geoserver-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
Sent: Sunday, October 28, 2007 8:33:57 PM
Subject: Re: [Geoserver-devel] PLEASE HELP - Facility Management in GeoServer

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

Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com

2

Hi Ganesh,

there's a sample hello world service tutorial that might be of some help, at
least to get you started extending geoserver:
<http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GEOSDOC/1+Hello+World+Service&gt;
The developer's guide may also be of interest
<http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GEOSDOC/Developers+Guide&gt;

Say following the hello world service tutorial you get the basis to create
your own custom module integrated with geoserver. From that point on, you can
get access to the geoserver catalog and almost anything you need from
geoserver as long as you add dependencies on the required modules.

That's almost all the direction I can give you with as little information
about what you plan to do, but feel free to keep posting questions.

cheers,

Gabriel

On Sunday 28 October 2007 07:27:56 pm Ganesh Jothikumar wrote:

Hi Andrea

              Thank You very much for the quick response. We really dont
want to do any changes to GeoServer and we definitely understand all theGPL
implications. That is for sure. Basically we want to build a solution using
GeoServer. Actually we would like to do something like your proposed second
solution. * "creating your solution as a mix of javascript and server side
code, where your server side code talks to GeoServer directly"
             But the problem is since we are new to GeoServer, we couldn't
find any examples or sample applications for server side code talking to
GeoServer directly. It would be very helpful if you could point us to some
sample app, examples, tutorials of the above solution. For eg. we want to
get handle of the request and the response objects in our server side code.
How to do these things. Any reference would be very helpful.

Please help us regarding this.

Thanks
ganesh

----- Original Message ----
From: Andrea Aime <aaime@anonymised.com>
To: Ganesh Jothikumar <ganeshjothikumar@anonymised.com>
Cc: GeoServer Dev <geoserver-devel@lists.sourceforge.net>
Sent: Sunday, October 28, 2007 8:33:57 PM
Subject: Re: [Geoserver-devel] PLEASE HELP - Facility Management in
GeoServer

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

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com

3

Just to re iterate over what Gabriel said. While its definitely possible
to extend GeoServer, the documentation on doing so is sparse. This is
due mostly to the driving force being documentation and features for end
users, rather then developers trying to use GeoServer as a framework.

But we definitely encourage people trying to do so to utilize the
developers list and the irc channel, as the developers are always ready
and willing to lend advice.

-Justin

Gabriel Roldán wrote:

Hi Ganesh,

there's a sample hello world service tutorial that might be of some help, at
least to get you started extending geoserver:
<http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GEOSDOC/1+Hello+World+Service&gt;
The developer's guide may also be of interest
<http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GEOSDOC/Developers+Guide&gt;

Say following the hello world service tutorial you get the basis to create
your own custom module integrated with geoserver. From that point on, you can
get access to the geoserver catalog and almost anything you need from
geoserver as long as you add dependencies on the required modules.

That's almost all the direction I can give you with as little information
about what you plan to do, but feel free to keep posting questions.

cheers,

Gabriel

On Sunday 28 October 2007 07:27:56 pm Ganesh Jothikumar wrote:

Hi Andrea

              Thank You very much for the quick response. We really dont
want to do any changes to GeoServer and we definitely understand all theGPL
implications. That is for sure. Basically we want to build a solution using
GeoServer. Actually we would like to do something like your proposed second
solution. * "creating your solution as a mix of javascript and server side
code, where your server side code talks to GeoServer directly"
             But the problem is since we are new to GeoServer, we couldn't
find any examples or sample applications for server side code talking to
GeoServer directly. It would be very helpful if you could point us to some
sample app, examples, tutorials of the above solution. For eg. we want to
get handle of the request and the response objects in our server side code.
How to do these things. Any reference would be very helpful.

Please help us regarding this.

Thanks
ganesh

----- Original Message ----
From: Andrea Aime <aaime@anonymised.com>
To: Ganesh Jothikumar <ganeshjothikumar@anonymised.com>
Cc: GeoServer Dev <geoserver-devel@lists.sourceforge.net>
Sent: Sunday, October 28, 2007 8:33:57 PM
Subject: Re: [Geoserver-devel] PLEASE HELP - Facility Management in
GeoServer

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

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc.
Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop.
Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser.
Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >> http://get.splunk.com/
_______________________________________________
Geoserver-devel mailing list
Geoserver-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/geoserver-devel

!DSPAM:4007,4724fc47284327180515871!

--
Justin Deoliveira
The Open Planning Project
http://topp.openplans.org