GeoTools 12-beta Released

The GeoTools community is delighted to announce availability of GeoTools 12-beta for testing:

• geotools-12-beta.zip
• geotools-12-beta-doc.zip
• geotools-12-beta-userguide.zip
• geotools-12-beta-project.zip
• maven repository

This release is made in conjunction with GeoServer 2.6-beta.

We will provide a more detailed feature list for the final 12.0 release, for now check out the GeoTools 12-beta Release Notes.

This beta release is provided for integration testing. Earlier this year we slowed down our release cycle for better collaboration. At this time we ask downstream projects to perform a smoke test and highlight any issues found.

Priority should be given to testing the following functionality:

Java 7

We have changed our source compile options to 1.7, you will need to use OpenJDK 7 or Oracle JDK 7 to this release of GeoTools. While upgrading to Java 7 take advantage of the try-with-resource syntax which is compatible many GeoTools constructs. 

try (SimpleFeatureIterator iterator = featureCollection.features()){
   while( iterator.hasNext() ){
     SimpleFeature feature = iterator.next();
     ...
   }
}

You can see the original proposal for details.

Thanks for CSIRO, Boundless and GeoSolutions for updating the build servers so we could make this transition in a responsible fashion.

gt-wfs-ng

The wfs-ng client is now ready for widespread use, acting as a drop-in replacement (making use of the same connection parameters). A great deal of attention has been paid to support axis-order corrections allowing the wfs-ng client to work with all manner of ill-behaved WFS implementations. 

String getCapabilities = "http://localhost:8080/geoserver/wfs?REQUEST=GetCapabilities";
Map connectionParameters = new HashMap();
connectionParameters.put("WFSDataStoreFactory:GET_CAPABILITIES_URL", getCapabilities );
DataStore dataStore = DataStoreFinder.getDataStore( connectionParameters );

In order to make wfs-ng a drop-in replacement (and respond to the same connection parameters) you are limited to only using one of the gt-wfs and gt-wfs-ng plugins in your application at a time.

advanced raster reprojection
A lot of work has been put into improving the raster reprojection story for glitches around the date line and polar regions. To enable these options use the following rendering hints:

rendererParams.put(StreamingRenderer.ADVANCED_PROJECTION_HANDLING_KEY, true);

rendererParams.put(StreamingRenderer.CONTINUOUS_MAP_WRAPPING, true);

We have set these parameters by default for GeoServer 2.6-beta so you are in good company for this test.

circular string

This release of GeoTools include new abilities for the WKTReader2 allowing it to read CIRCULAR string. This is especially exciting as it makes use of series of subclass of JTS LineString. These subclasses will use a tolerance to produce appropriate  coordinates for integration with JTS Geometry operations. As far as JTS is concerned they walk and talk like a LineString, while you can control the implementation by defining control points and a tolerance.

GeometryFactory geometryFactory = JTSFactoryFinder.getGeometryFactory();
CurvedGeometryFactory curvedfactory = new CurvedGeometryFactory(Double.MAX_VALUE);    
WKTReader2 reader = new WKTReader2(curvedfactory);
CircularString arc = (CircularString) reader.read("CIRCULARSTRING(10 14,6 10,14 10)");

For more details check out the geometry documentation.  The original proposal is also online. 

LineString subclasses supporting Arcs

This implementation has been integrated with OracleDataStore (for all those data sets that include circular arcs). We are also interested in feedback on CurvedGeometryFactory as the API is only a few weeks old.

General

We are waiting on documentation for a couple of changes, stay tuned for details on:

• image mosaic vector foot prints
• coverage views

About GeoTools 12

GeoTools 12 is scheduled for release in Q2 highlighting the following features:

• Java 7 is now required
• wfs-ng client with new GML parsing engine
• Support for curved strings via CurvedGeometryFactory, WKTReader2 and Oracle

GeoTools 11.2 released

The GeoTools community is happy to announce the latest  GeoTools 11.2 download:

• geotools-11.2-bin.zip
• geotools-11.2-doc.zip
• geotools-11.2-userguide.zip
• geotools-11.2-project.zip

This release is also available from our maven repository. This release is made in conjunction with GeoServer 2.5.2.

This is a release of the GeoTools 11 Stable series recommended for production systems. The release schedule now offers 6 months of stable releases followed by six months of maintenance releases.

A few highlights from the GeoTools 11.2-Release Notes:

• Some image mosaic fixes about performance, granule harvesting, and heterogeneous mosaic management
• Some fixes in XML encoding, in GML and WPS land
• Upgraded imageio-ext dependency to 1.1.10
• Some improvements in Grib and NetCDF formats 

Thanks to Andrea for this release (GeoSolutions).

About GeoTools 11

Summary of the new features for the GeoTools 11 series:

• The DataStore API has a new removeSchema method to drop feature types. This new optional feature is currently implemented by the JDBCDataStore family (all spatial database backed stores), other stores will likely throw an UnsupportedOperationException
• JDBCDataStore now exposes facilities to list, create and destroy indexes on database columns.
• Ability to create and drop databases from the PostgisNGFactory
• PostGis data store will now call ST_Simplify when the GEOMETRY_SIMPLIFICATION hint is provided, significantly speeding up loading of complex geometries  (the renderer can perform scale based simplification already, but doing it before sending the data speeds up data retrieval significantly)
• ImageMosaic can now manage vector footprints for its granules, allowing to filter out no-data or corrupted sections of the imagery
• All properties in a SLD style can now have a local unit of measure, as opposed to specifying the unit of measure per symbolizer. For example, if you need to have a line width to be 10 meters, its value can now be "10m"
• Improved handling of data with 3D coordinates in JDBC data stores
• A number of small improvements to the rendering engine, such as improved raster icon placement resulting in cleaner, less blurry output, improved label grouping, better handling of icons at the border of the map and in general much improved estimation of the buffer area needed to include all symbols in a map (for features that sit outside the map, but whose symbols are big enough to enter it).