Thursday, January 14, 2010

GeoTools 2.6.1 Released

The GeoTools 2.6.1 release is now available for download:
This release contains a host of improvements and bug fixes. In particular the JMapPane has received a lively round of testing and feedback, MySql is back among the supported data stores in its JDBC-NG implementation along with MS SQL Server and SpatiaLite.

The epsg-hsql module now creates its cached EPSG database much faster and with better concurrency control, and a new projection, the polyconic one, has been added to the referencing subsystem.

The rendering subsystem can now accept Function as a source for the Symbolizer geometry, meaning it's possible to perform a transformation (buffer, offset, point extraction) before the actual rendering chain starts (transformations are applied in the geometry native coordinate reference system).Also new is the ability to automatically displace point and polygon labels in search for a position that is not used by another label, using the same vendor parameter already available for lines.

A brand new JPEG2000 coverage reader that can leverage on kakadu has been added, more information can be found here.
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Sunday, January 10, 2010

Polyconic

A couple of things surprised me in a recent trip to Brazil.

Interestingly there was a lack of adoption of many common open source geospatial tools. Turns out that open source is competing in the market with "free as in beer" products. I imagine that will shape into quite the dust up in the years ahead.

The other surprise for me was that GeoServer could not really be used; turns out that the local coordinate reference system for the Brazilian datasets was in a projection not supported by GeoTools. I managed a little bit of research into the topic; collecting some data samples and so on.

Over the holidays Andrea managed to implement the missing "Polyconic Projection" and it is great to have visual confirmation of the result.



Thanks for this fix Andrea - it really will open up a new market for GeoTools.
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