GeoTools FOSS4G 2011

GeoTools had a great showing at the recent FOSS4G Conference (Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial) which was held in Denver last month. Presentations at the conference highlighted how the hard work of the GeoTools developers is paying off in terms of the wide adoption of the library, and its use in some amazing applications.

There were a number of talks directly on GeoTools this year:

• Raster data in GeoServer and GeoTools: Achievements, issues and future developments (GeoSolutions) slideshare
• Status of GeoTools (GeoSolutions,LISAsoft,OpenGeo) slideshare

GeoServer as always provides an excellent example of GeoTools in action:

• The State of GeoServer (GeoSolutions,OpenGeo) slideshare
• GeoServer on steroids (GeoSolutions)
• The status of GeoServer WPS (GeoSolutions)
• Advanced cartographic map rendering in GeoServer (GeoSolutions)
• Web Mapping with GeoServer (OpenGeo)
• Practical use of GeoServer & SLD for WMS (GISassistANS AB)
• Integration of GeoServer with NoSQL databases (Data Tactics Corp)
• Mapnik2GeoTools (OpenGeo)

These presentations are a great way to see what is possible with GeoTools. Often it is easier to understand the capabilities of the library by seeing it in use, and both the State of GeoServer and Advanced cartographic map rendering presentations are excellent examples of this.

A special mention to GeoScript which is building a bridge between GeoTools functionality and a range of scripting languages, with the emphasis on providing a concise and simple API:

• GeoScript - Spatial Capabilities for Scripting Languages GeoScript.ppt slideshare(OpenGeo)
• Working with GeoScript (OpenGeo)
• Scripting GeoServer with GeoScript (OpenGeo) slideshare

Geomajas had a strong showing this year with several presentations plus a hands-on workshop:

• Introduction to Geomajas (Geosparc)
• Geomajas, a GIS framework for the web(Geosparc)
• Mobile GIS through Geomajas(Geosparc)
• Securing GIS data(Geosparc)

We are hoping to attract more direct participation of Geomajas developers in the GeoTools project (for now we just have a welcome page).

Did I miss you project in this roll call? Contribute a welcome page to the GeoTools User Guide in order to be included in promotional activities!

GeoTools Codesprint

Finally a big thanks to those taking part in the GeoTools code sprint!

• Looked into why sorting is turned off for MemoryDataStore!
• Put together a Process Tutorial (OctagonalEnvelope in 5 lines!)
• A couple great volunteers (shown below) updated the Eclipse Quickstart to work with the included copy of Maven
• Looked into Neo4j - but got stuck on AGPL license (grrr!)