Hi Greg,
1. data - lots of data out there, but "free" streets for USA only = TIGER
1:100,000 USGS DLG is very old now, circa late 1980's, and street
nomenclature is missing
DCW vmaplevel_0 only gets you to major roads (it is international though)
You can also use a public OWS TerraServer for DOQ imagery and there are some
TIGER OWS out there as well.
Example:
http://terraservice.net/ogcmap.ashx?version=1.1.1&service=WMS&ServiceName=WM
S&request=GetMap&layers=DOQ&format=image/png&transparent=TRUE&srs=EPSG:4326&
bbox=-112.09416192770004,33.471487522125244,-112.06375789642334,33.522161006
92749&WIDTH=600&HEIGHT=1000>
Probably an easy thing would be to query an existing public TIGER for an
image/png which you then feed out to the client in zipped form
As far as getting TIGER into a PostGIS datastore you should look at ogr2ogr
http://gdal.maptools.org/ogr/ogr2ogr.html
2. nice thing about GeoServer and OWS in general is that the datastore is
decoupled from the service. You have options - many options, but PostGIS is
"free" and works as good as Oracle from my point of view.
3. WMS has a PNG format output but the zip part you need to add to the chain
- image/png
4. Yes! you want to use a geospatial database if you are serving all of
TIGER or even one state of TIGER - TIGER = lots of data
5. I assume geotools or something like gdal http://gdal.maptools.org/ or
even JAI could get you there, but GeoServer ought to be a more flexible
approach.
If you really want pt/radius (circle) view result, note that WMS is
limited to a box view, but you could mask the rectangle result with a
circle/polygon mask. Direct PostGIS query could give you a clipped pt/radius
result set but it's not as efficient as a rect bbox query
6. OWS might be overkill depending on what you want and license issues?
You could also look at some of the commercial map apis GoogleMaps, Yahoo
Maps, MS LocalLive
The GoogleMap API if you want to add just simple points/polylines or Google
Earth KML if you have more complex needs.
i.e http://kh.google.com/kh?v=3&t=tqstqtqrtrqqsrqtqsq gets you jpeg and a
gdal or JAI transform could make it PNG and then add a zip/gzip to the chain
Yahoo - http://developer.yahoo.com/maps/ png (default)
There's also MS http://local.live.com/ which I've been told has an API like
Google (I haven't really played with it but it does look pretty snazzy)
Of course OWS is the most flexible and license free approach.
Randy George
-----Original Message-----
From: geoserver-users-bounces@lists.sourceforge.net
[mailto:geoserver-users-bounces@lists.sourceforge.net] On Behalf Of Gregory
Pierce
Sent: Wednesday, July 05, 2006 10:22 AM
To: geoserver-users@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: [Geoserver-users] I need someone to dumb a few things down for me
Okay so I've got GeoServer setup and I can generate images of maps
from the sample database. So I can do the basics of what the Users
Guide discusses. I apologize if this is below the level of questions
for this mailing list, but after reading through a number of books on
GIS and on MapServer (couldn't find one on GeoServer) there are
things that I still don't know how to do. I will happily document
this stuff for inclusion into the Wiki
1) Where do I get new data from? I want to grab data for Louisiana,
but I'm not sure where I should get it from. Should I be buying this
data from someone? All I really want are streets and such which seems
to suggest that all I need is TIGER data, but I can't be sure.
2) Does GeoServer have a data format that it prefers/requires? If so,
do I just import the data using the web interface and my data gets
into that format?The website talks about supporting WFS-T and WMS,
but those aren't import data formats as far as I have been able to
find. Or more specifically, I can't find any 'free' public data in
this format.
3) When I go to create my own output format, the tutorial doesn't
really seem to help me. I want to create a zipped PNG file as output.
Do I really have to put my class into the actual geoserver build as
step 1 suggests? Can't formats be like plugins that simply implement
the interface and sit in a directory that is scanned at startup and
periodically thereafter?
4) Do I actually want/need to use a database with GeoServer? I had
always considered it part of my architecture that I would use
PostGIS, but I don't know if I need to.
5) If all I really want is a zipped PNG of a lat-lon out to a
specified radius, am I really hitting the problem at the wrong level
and should really be using the Geotools toolkit on which GeoServer is
based?
Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security?
Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your job
easier
Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache Geronimo
http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=120709&bid=263057&dat=121642
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