G'Day all,
This is a follow up to an request sent in back in July (http://osgeo-org.1803224.n2.nabble.com/Basic-question-Layer-Style-Strategies-td6609325.html).
Having worked with the GeoServer admin interface for a few months now I'm still baffled to discover the "right" way to manage data layers. Any pointers to relevant documentation or exemplar explanations would be hugely appreciated.
Here's our context:
We've got standalone installs of the latest GeoServer, GeoNetwork, and GeoExplorer all running in the same Tomcat directory, with PostGIS on the back end, and Debian for the OS.
Like many organisations, ours is dominated by ArcGIS. The researchers all run Arc, and have provided their work as shape files. For the most part we are dealing with point and polygon data, with unique style definitions for each layer in the shapefile.
These shapefiles can comprise 100+ layers (each with a distinct legend, abstract, etc).
So, when they send me the shapefile.zip, the first problem is producing an SLD for each of the layers. This is a pretty tedious process in itself.
Once we've got the data and styles loaded up we come back to GeoServer admin.
The shapefile (example.shp) has been loaded once into a data store.
In order to produce the 100+ layers, I have to:
1. Click on Add new resource
2. Choose the datastore
3. Locate example.shp and select [Republish]
4. Give the new layer a unique name, calculate bounding box, manually copy/paste the abstract info
5. Swap to the Publish tab and scroll through several hundred styles to locate the one we're after
6. Click to Save
Now this one layer is added to the growing list of layers defined on the server. Repeat this by 100 times and you have one dataset done. In our case there's about 25 more datasets to go. I'm not going to live through it!
Note that this "republish" technique is great because I don't have to re-upload the shapefile data each time...but 'republish' includes the entire dataset (naturally). So when we look at the map in a viewer and click for feature info, what gets returned is the entire dataset, not just the specific layer that has been styled.
This just doesn't make sense: I'm certain that there's a "management strategy" that I'm not getting....
Hopefully the answer is as simple as some kind soul saying "For goodness sake, would you just read GeoServer 101 (link here)" ... but to date I have not found that resource to address my issues.
Thanks very much in advance for any pointers.
JB
--
John Brisbin
Managing Director, BoaB interactive Pty Ltd
POB 802 Townsville, QLD 4810
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