GeoTools: September 2013

Friday, September 20, 2013

GeoTools 10.0 Released

The GeoTools community is happy to bring you the latest GeoTools 10.0 download:

As an alternative to downloading this release has been deployed to our maven repository.

This release is made in conjunction with GeoServer 2.4.0 and GeoWebCache 1.5.0. We would to thank everyone who has helped out with testing.

Please see the GeoTools 10.0 Release Notes for additional details.

About GeoTools 10.x Series

Summary of the new features for the GeoTools 10.x series:

Structured grid coverage readers allow raster data sources that publish composite data products to expose individual rasters (ie granules) for processing, while still providing a seamless experience for rendering. The mosaic and NetCDF modules are the first ones to implement these new interfaces.
Efficient support for multiple coverages in GridCoverageReader provides ad-hoc access to raster formats that publish more that one data product. A image mosaic made of NetCDF granules and single file NetCDF sources are the first implementors of these new capabilities
A new implementation of Shapefile DataStore (based on ContentDataStore superclass). This upgrade should be seamless for all users using DataStoreFactoryFinder. If you explicitly made use of the ShapefileDataStore or IndexedShapefileDataStore class please check the upgrade instructions.
The transform module graduated to supported status, providing a seamless way to rename, retype and hide SimpleFeatureSource attributes, as well as creating new ones based on OGC Expression
Additional OGC modules for the WCS 2.0 and WCS 2.0 EO models as well as adding XML parsers and encoders

The 10.x series has a number of research and development activities that may be of interest:

NetCDF has been updated to take advantage of the new coverage API introduced above
GeoPackage: a sample implementation of the geopackage spec that is currently being developed by the OGC

While exciting, this functionally is looking for volunteers and/or funding to meet our quality assurance standards. If you are interested please introduce yourself on geotools-devel (or check out options for commercial support).

Enjoy,
The GeoTools Community
http://geotools.org

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

GeoTools IP Review Update

There we go, a blog title designed to scare away all but the most dedicated blog readers.

GeoTools Review Status update

After several weeks of email, and a couple days of fixing, I am in the clear to make a GeoTools 9.0-M1 release. Basically the IP review discussion we have been having with LocationTech is complete for GeoTools.

Here are the links:

Only the subset of GeoTools that is used by uDig was reviewed, and there are still many dependencies left to be contacted. But GeoTools is by far the largest stepping stone.

Thanks to all the project leads who will be (or have already been) contacted. We really appreciate you taking the time to answer a few questions.

Wait Didn't OSGeo do this Already?

GeoTools has gone through the OSGeo Incubation Process, and has an extensive Code Provenance Review.
This review was focused on minimising the risk to the OSGeo Foundation by taking on GeoTools as a project. Some risks the foundation is comfortable with, ie listing all known problems, are not necessarly sufficient for all users (who would like to see known problems fixed).
The OSGeo Foundation does not require projects fix all issues in order to give interested parties a chance to fix (or fund) the work.

Why this is Cool

So why is this cool? The thing is these intellectual property reviews happen all the time, but behind closed doors. If we are really lucky us open source projects get told about the result, or a few private emails with questions.
And if an IP review fails, it fails quietly and we never hear anything again. Indeed if we ask what happened often the organisation conducting the review is forbidden to talk to us about it (for fear of the conversation being taken as advice).
Contrast this with recent developments:

Google was in position to talk to us about our contributor agreement being unusual. As a result we were able to role out a contribution agreement, OSGeo wide.
LocationTech IP review is in position to talk with the GeoTools development team, allowing us to answer any questions, and fix any issues that are of concern.
IBM China was able to ask a few questions via private email which were passed on to the project team as bug reports

These developments lower the barrier of entry for using GeoTools in a corporate setting.

So how did we do?

We kind of nailed it, a big thanks to:

All those who helped dig into the past
(ie sort out where the code comes from).
And Brett Walker for putting together our github pull request policy
(ie looking into the future and sorting out where our code will come from)

Many project have sorted out how patches work, but have not extended that idea to cover github pull requests.

The only area where we could do a bit better is with the EMF generated code which currently says:

/**

It would be nice to configure EMF to fill this in next time we generate stuff. As an example for CSW I ended up with:

/**

* This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or

* modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public

* License as published by the Free Software Foundation;

* version 2.1 of the License.

* This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,

* but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of

* MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU

* Lesser General Public License for more details.

* $Id$
*

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

GeoTools 10-RC2 released

The GeoTools community is happy to bring you the latest GeoTools 10-RC2 download:

As an alternative to downloading this release has been deployed to our maven repository.

This release is made in conjunction with GeoServer 2.4-RC2 containing a few last minute fixes before FOSS4G. We would to thank everyone who has helped out with testing.

Please see the GeoTools 10-RC2 Release Notes for additional details.

If you are working with a projects that uses GeoTools please take a moment to try out GeoTools-10-RC2. This is your chance to check for any regressions or integration issues prior to the stable 10.0 release.

Thanks to Jody Garnett and OpenGeo for issuing this release.

About GeoTools 10.x Series

Summary of the new features for the GeoTools 10.x series:

Structured grid coverage readers allow raster data sources that publish composite data products to expose individual rasters (ie granules) for processing, while still providing a seamless experience for rendering. The mosaic and NetCDF modules are the first ones to implement these new interfaces.
Efficient support for multiple coverages in GridCoverageReader provides ad-hoc access to raster formats that publish more that one data product. A image mosaic made of NetCDF granules and single file NetCDF sources are the first implementors of these new capabilities
A new implementation of Shapefile DataStore (based on ContentDataStore superclass). This upgrade should be seamless for all users using DataStoreFactoryFinder. If you explicitly made use of the ShapefileDataStore or IndexedShapefileDataStore class please check the upgrade instructions.
The transform module graduated to supported status, providing a seamless way to rename, retype and hide SimpleFeatureSource attributes, as well as creating new ones based on OGC Expression
Additional OGC modules for the WCS 2.0 and WCS 2.0 EO models as well as adding XML parsers and encoders

The 10.x series has a number of research and development activities that may be of interest:

NetCDF has been updated to take advantage of the new coverage API introduced above
GeoPackage: a sample implementation of the geopackage spec that is currently being developed by the OGC