GeoTools

AURIN Job Openings

2012-01-24T07:10:00.000-08:00

Many of the best known GeoTools examples are popular open source projects. If you follow our user list, you will know that GeoTools is used in a wide range of environments and settings.

With that in mind, we are happy to pass along a couple of job openings from Martin Tomko and the Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network (AURIN):

GeoTools experience is a plus; and tell Martin we sent you.

If you have a GeoTools related job post you would like us to pass along, please contact your nearest PMC member and we would be glad to help.

GeoTools 2.7.4 Released

2011-12-21T09:11:00.000-08:00

The GeoTools community is pleased to announce the release of GeoTools 2.7.4, available for download from source forge:

Those using maven should see the Quickstart for details on using the OSGeo maven repository.

This release includes 39 fixed bugs and new improvements. Some of the highlights include:

UUID primary key support for PostGIS
Basic HTTP authentication with WMS client
Van der Grinten projection
getAboutInfo added to GeoTools class

And much more. Check out the release notes for all the details.

Enjoy,

The GeoTools Community
http://geotools.org

GeoTools 8.0-M4 Released

2011-12-07T19:14:00.001-08:00

The GeoTools community is pleased to announce the availability of GeoTools 8.0-M4 for downloadfrom source forge:

If you are using Maven this release is deployed to our OSGeo Maven Repository: For more information on setting up your project with Mavensee the Quickstart (included in the userguide documentation pack above).

This is a milestone release made in conjunction with the uDig 1.3.0 release..

This release focuses on a few quick fixes:

GeoTools WFSDataStore once again works with GeoServer - thanks to Gabriel for this quick fix
ContentDataStore continues to improve - now offering transaction support to implementors of file based formats
The documentation has been updated with feedback from the GeoSpatial for Java course at OSDC
For more details see the GeoTools8.0-M4 Release Notes

Finally thanks to Jody and LISAsoft for making this release.
Enjoy,
The GeoTools Community
http://geotools.org

GeoTools 8.0-M3 Released

2011-11-19T19:09:00.001-08:00

The GeoTools community is pleased to announce the availability of GeoTools 8.0-M3 for downloadfrom source forge:

If you are using Maven this release is deployed to our OSGeo Maven Repository: For more information on setting up your project with Mavensee the Quickstart (includedin the userguide documentation pack above).

This is a milestone release made in conjunction with the Open Source Developers Conference.

This is an incremental release with a few usability and documentation improvements ahead of a "Geospatial for Java" workshop:

The big news is updating the library for the WFS 2.0 filter and Query model. Justin and Gabriel have been hard at work on an experimental branch and we are pleased to see this work return to trunk
Thanks to Frank Gasdorf we now have German translations for the gt-swing module
Thanks to Micheal Bedward for his continued attention to detail working through all the MapContent and Layer methods. Combined with consistently following the JComponent naming conventions the gt-swing module is becoming easier and easier to work with.
Jody Garnett continues to refine the user guide; and has added CommonFactoryFinder.getFilterFactory() methods that no longer require a set of hints be passed in. Ninety percent of the time example code used null for the set of hints.
Gabriel has been hard at work adding basic HTTP authentication to the WMS client code
Gabriel, Jody and Mark have been working through support for versioned information using the Filter 2.0 ResourceId concepts
Micheal Bedward has added a great improvement with GeoTools.getAboutInfo() - allowing applications to log the GeoTools version, execution environment and listing the GeoTools jars discovered on the CLASSPATH. For bonus points this information is available in a ready to use AboutDialog
And 38 morein the GeoTools8.0-M3 Release Notes

Finally thanks to Jody Garnett and LISAsoft for putting this release out.
Enjoy,
The GeoTools Community
http://geotools.org

GeoTools Mini Conference at OSDC Canberra

2011-10-30T04:52:00.000-07:00

GeoTools has lined up an exciting "Mini Conference" slot at this years Open Source Developers Conference in Canberra Nov 14th (at Australian National University in the Manning Clark Center).

You can attend just the GeoTools session for $50 - but we recommend staying for the whole open source conference. There is also the Spatial@Gov conference running concurrently if you would like to focus on maps for the rest of the week.

The half day session is brought to you by two Australia GeoTools leaders: Tisham Dhar and Jody Garnett.
For details:

GeoTools Tutorial (Mini Conference)

Would you like to run a GeoTools tutorial in your area? Join us on geotools-devel to discuss running a course (and translation opportunities). The course is an excellent introduction to both open source and geospatial conferences.
Thank you to the Aust-NZ OSGeo chapter for setting up this opportunity.

GeoTools 2.7.3 Released

2011-10-07T05:51:00.000-07:00

The GeoTools community is pleased to announce the availability of GeoTools 2.7.3 for download from source forge:

If you are using Maven this release is deployed to our OSGeo Maven Repository: For more information on setting up your project with Maven see the Quickstart (included in the welcome documentation pack above).

This is a maintenance release focused on quality made conjunction with GeoServer 2.1.2.

With stable releases there is always a larger pool of people making contributions to thank. While it may not sound as exciting as listing the latest cool new features; it is this work on Quality that makes the GeoTools library a trusted success.

Rudi Hochmeister was kind enough to sort out connection pool handling for ArcSDE datastore.
Serhat Gulcicek has worked on the number of domain types the PostGIS DataStore can handle
Gabriel Roldan has been working a bit of WFSDataStore and has the honour of fixing the oldest bug of this release (GEOT-465 first requested 2005).
Gabriel has also been working the WMS client code allowing to better handle custom attributes advertised in the server capabilities document.
Jan De Moerloose has figured out a very tricky fix for the handling of patch patterns across tile borders.
Fernando González Cortés has fixed the handling of null shapefile records.
Andrea has optimised the recode, categorise and interpolate functions (which are heavily used when creating good custom styles)
And 75 more in the GeoTools 2.7.3 Release Notes

Finally thanks to Andrea and GeoSolutions for putting this release out; as always their work is appreciated.

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

GeoTools 8.0-M2 Released

2011-10-06T08:07:00.000-07:00

The GeoTools 8.0-M1 release is now available on sourceforge for download:

If you are using maven GeoTools 8.0-M2 is available from the OSGeo repository. This is a milestone build made conjunction with uDig 1.2.3.

There are lots of exciting improvements (see the release notes below for the complete list).

Micheal Bedward has been putting an amazing amount of work into the gt-swing module. The visible change is cleaning up the use of MapContent, MapViewport and the new Layer classes. The example code used in the documentation has been updated to reflect the changes to gt-swing.

There are many more improvements under hood for the gt-swing module as the internals have been refactored to be nice and clean, easy to follow and most importantly testable. This last point really reflects the hard work and dedication involved as gt-swing is groomed to meet the QA guidelines required to be included in the library proper.

Maurcio has found time to update the Contextual Query Language (CQL) to leverage the the new temporal filter support that has been added to support WFS 2.0.

Andrea has been very busy supporting the gt-renderer module (in particular to enable the work in gt-swing). He has also found time to work on a couple amazing new features - the most popular of which is a new StyleBuilder allowing the definition of an SLD style in a few lines of code.

Jody got a little bit of time to work on the process support for this release. The big change is support for annotation based process definition (with a tutorial created during the FOSS4G code sprint so you can easily define your own processes). The process implementations have been have been split into gt-process-raster, gt-process-feature and gt-process geometry and received a huge influx of high quality implementations from the GeoServer project. This results in fifty processes being available out of the box.

Finally this release makes use of JTS 1.12 with the wonderful improvement of equalsExact, equalsTopo and equalsNorm as described in our docs. This change really improves the usability of Geometry for the JTS library and reduces frustration for new users.

The following change proposals have been accepted for GeoTools 8.0:

Java 6 - yes! Thanks to Christian Mueller for updating the build instructions for this one. Special thanks to Andrea for updating the image rendering tests to account for different font metrics between Java 5 and Java 6.
Allow Build with Maven 2 or Maven 3 - Congrats to Cliff for his first change proposal - and Andrea and Ben for doing the work!
Temporal Filter Support - another great bit of work from Justin (a stepping stone for WFS 2.0)
Detailed information about Function arguments and Return Type - thanks to Justin and Jody for sorting out the use of Parameters and filling in the information for the existing functions. This is a key improvement which will make the library and style creation much easier to use.

As always we welcome volunteers to the GeoTools project. We have a great team, stop by the geotools-developer list and join the fun.
For more information:

The GeoTools development team would like to thank the contributors that provided patches, the users for their feedback and the companies providing sponsorship to fix bugs.

Enjoy,
The GeoTools Community

GeoTools FOSS4G 2011

2011-10-03T15:40:00.000-07:00

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!)

GeoTools Code Visualisation

2011-09-26T20:42:00.000-07:00

Managed to create a small movie showing recent commits to the GeoTools repository:

GeoTools Source (YouTube)

Here is an attempt at an embedded iframe; however this is not showing up on planet.osgeo.org; so try the above link...

Visualisation was created with gource which installed quite nicely on a mac using "brew install gource". The result is an interactive visualisation you can use to visually explore what developers have been up to.

The second step was to make a movie using "ffmpeg" where I had a bit of install trouble (resolved here).

Here is what that looked like on the command line:

gource -title GeoTools -1280x720 --auto-skip-seconds 1 --background 333333 --font-colour EDEDED --seconds-per-day 0.1 -o geotools.ppm
ffmpeg -y -b 10000K -r 60 -f image2pipe -vcodec ppm -i geotools.ppm -vcodec libx264 -vpre slow -threads 0 -bf 0 geotools.x264.mp4

Help the swing module to speak your language

2011-09-14T18:32:00.001-07:00

We are adding support for localized text strings to the gt-swing module to make it easier for you to provide local versions of your applications.

A new LocaleUtils class has been added so that client code doesn't need to worry about the usual Java i18n boiler plate code for loading and caching ResourceBundles etc. Using this class, an application can set a preferred locale at the beginning of a session, prior to constructing any GUI components that will use localized text strings), like this:

LocaleUtils.setLocale(Locale.ITALIAN);

Then, localized text strings are retrieved like this:

String localToolTip = LocaleUtils.getValue("CursorTool", "ZoomInTooltip");

The text strings are stored in properties files as per the usual Java i18n conventions. For the swing module, the properties files are in the org.geotools.swing.locale package and group strings according to component category: e.g. "CursorTool". Adding support for a new language or language variant simply involves adding the appropriate locale to the properties files. LocaleUtils provides support for locales that are only defined for a subset of properties files by allowing the application to specify a list of locales in preference order. For example:

LocaleUtils.setLocale( Arrays.asList( firstPrefLocale, secondPrefLocale, fallbackLocale ) );

How you can help

We need volunteers to help add and review translations. To begin with, we are just adding support for the text strings used within the gt-swing module itself plus a small selection of generally useful strings. Next, we hope to extend the LocaleUtils class so that applications can register their own properties files.

If you would like to help please contact us via the GeoTools User list.

Current work on the gt-swing module

2011-08-21T18:44:00.000-07:00

The gt-swing module, which provides GUI widgets for GeoTools applications, is in transition. This is a technical term for broken - but broken with a mission: gt-swing module is being overhauled to become a fully supported GeoTools module.

What does this mean ?

Well, right now it means that if you want to run any of our tutorial applications you will need to use GeoTools version 8-SNAPSHOT. This is the development version which is updated daily. We wouldn't normally inflict this on those new to the library, but at the moment it is the only way you will get the tutorials to work.

What else does it mean ?

A better gt-swing module with lots of new features, better documentation and easier to understand code. In particular, the JMapPane and JMapFrame classes have been largely re-written and there is a new JLayeredMapPane class to make it easier to do animations and custom graphics over a map display.

When ?

Real Soon Now. Much of the work has already been completed. See the GeoTools issues reporter for a summary.

GeoTools has been so good to me I really want to help: what can I do ?

To date, we've only had enough people-power to work on the trunk sources in the GeoTools code repository (version 8-SNAPSHOT). We are looking for volunteers to help get the gt-swing module working again on the GeoTools stable branch (version 2.7). If you can help, please sing out on the user list. We will like you a lot.

GeoTools 8.0-M1 Released

2011-07-08T09:48:00.000-07:00

The GeoTools 8.0-M1 release is now available on sourceforge for download:

If you are using maven GeoTools 8.0-M1 is available from the OSGeo repository.

This is a milestone build made conjunction with uDig 1.2.2.

There are lots of exciting improvements (see the release notes below for the complete list).

The following change proposals were accepted:

Java 6 - yes! Thanks to Christian Mueller for updating the build instructions for this one. Special thanks to Andrea for updating the image rendering tests to account for different font metrics between Java 5 and Java 6.
Allow Build with Maven 2 or Maven 3 - Congrats to Cliff for his first change proposal - and Andrea and Ben for doing the work!
Temporal Filter Support - another great bit of work from Justin (a stepping stone for WFS 2.0)
Detailed information about Function arguments and Return Type - thanks to Justin and Jody for sorting out the use of Parameters and filling in the information for the existing functions. This is a key improvement which will make the library and style creation much easier to use.

This release makes use of the latest JTS 1.12 and ImageIO-Ext-1.1.0, thanks to Micheal and Daniele for the care and quality assurance required to bring you the latest software.

Thanks to Jody for continuing to update the user guide to reflect the latest changes - highlights include Core Feature (documented for the OSGeoLive DVD) and Filter documentation covering the new temporal support with diagrams and code examples.

A big thank you to Andrea, Jody and Micheal who took a number of trys to safely update the map and layer data structures introduced in 2.6.0. This was the result of careful work involving collaboration, timezones,and amusing KML errors. We kindly ask that downstream projects review this work and make the transition now if they have not already done so.

Jesse Eichar continues to work on support for Teradata that will be appearing in the next release of uDig. Thanks also to Lee for working through the abstract data store tutorial. Jody provided an interesting patch allowing a shapefile to write out features in the same order they were added.

As always we welcome volunteers to the GeoTools project. We have a great team, stop by the geotools-developer list and join the fun.

For more information:

The GeoTools development team would like to thank the contributors that provided patches, the users for their feedback and the companies providing sponsorship to fix bugs.

Enjoy,
The GeoTools Community

GeoTools 2.7.2 Released

2011-06-22T07:38:00.000-07:00

The GeoTools 2.7.2 release is now available on sourceforge for download:

If you are using maven GeoTools 2.7.2 is available from the OSGeo repository.

This is a bug fix release made in conjunction with GeoServer 2.1.1.

This is primarily a maintenance release focused on improving GeoTools 2.7 and is not devoted to new features. However a few call out to recognise some excellent work:

A long standing glitch in rendering line patterns was resolved; and GeoTools has been updated to work with PostGIS 2.0. Thanks Andrea and GeoSolutions for both of these fixes.

Thanks to Ben for back porting EMF 2.6.1 to the stable branch.

For more information:

The GeoTools development team would like to thank the contributors that provided parches, the users for their feedback and the companies providing sponsorship to fix bugs. Thanks to LISAsoft for sponsoring this maintenance release.

Enjoy,
The GeoTools Community

GeoTools developers considering a switch to Java 6

2011-06-08T01:32:00.001-07:00

GeoTools developers are considering aswitch to Java 6 as the minimum requirement starting with GeoTools 8.0: this will give us an improved API to rely on, faster development cycle and a more common development environment setup (finding Java 5 is getting increasingly difficult, especially on some platforms).

The current stable series, 2.7.x, will remain on Java 5, giving people needing to support the old JDK at the very least another six months of live development.

We’d like to hear your opinion on this move. Let us know by voting on the user poll:

http://www.micropoll.com/a/mpview/943467-423595

Thanks for your participation!

GeoTools 2.7.1 Released

2011-05-12T07:22:00.000-07:00

GeoTools 2.7.1 has been released and is available for download:

This release brings a number of bug fixes and few new improvements. ECQL has been updated to support case insensitive like (ILIKE). JMapPane performance has been improved for long running rendering jobs. And ImageMosaic has been upgraded to use the latest jai-tools 1.1.1.

And much more. Check out the change log for the full list of what's new in 2.7.1.

Thanks for supporting GeoTools!

New User Guide

2011-05-03T05:54:00.000-07:00

Today brings to an end a three month journey in "porting" the User Guide from from the GeoTools wiki over to the same Sphinx build system we use for our website. This was a journey fraught with peril (having to reinstall my machine from backup halfway through), epic in length (at one point 1100 00 words but I have not looked in a bit) and ultimately rewarding:

GeoTools User Guide

It is hard to express the extent of this change; much of the content has been rewritten; and more importantly updated to reflect the latest GeoTools. More importantly the "update" will be *sticky* as code examples are pulled from live source code; which is compiled as part of the publication process.
Rather than try and offer a summery - here is a round up of blog posts and tweets linking into the new docs:

Documentation Links (Blog Post)
Classifiers and ColorBrewer (Blog Post)
Before and After (Blog Post)
ObjectAid (Blog Post)
feature mode? it is in the docs
filter guide? it is in the docs
text handling more than just string
tradotopma; feature model guide (ie code examples) moved earlier
thanks &fgdr1976 for the patch, opengis docs ported only 30 more to go
Updated pictures from object aid ObjectAid is nice UML for people who want to get back to programming tool
Type and Model 29 to go
jts the interesting math with pictures
Text facade for InternationalString
Code example for Utilities
A few of the Collection Classes we have kicking around
ISO 19107 Geometry explained and the only three classes you need to use
Updated a few more gt-opengis pages: coordinate system and unit background for gt-referencing
gt-referencing docs are ported to sphinx this is the first time listing unsupported/supported plugins
user guide table of contents taking shape no more hunting around
porting geotools docs - jdbc image moasic seems to have more docs then all the other image formats combined
coverage docs ready - half way done to porting docs
gt-main docs bah has it really been this long since I looked at them? I think 10% is documented. Perhaps just use test cases.
DataUtilities docs before and after - now covers all the methods
filter examples now with pictures to cut down on the questions http://t.co/35wCOba
filter docs now with function list and pictures
docs for feature collection now with lots of examples; including indexed collections and join
added gt-api docs for DataStore and Parameter
gt-data docs for using DataStore and FeatureSource lots of pictures with an overview diagram for each section
docs for gt-jdbc this time working through each plugin as I go
docs for gt-jdbc are up
style docs symbology encoding and style layer descriptor and code
docs for markfactory with code example
docs, using sphinx to steal examples from test case sample data for gt-svg and gt-chart
Q: (style) long page of everything? or (jts) small pages Basically do you plan to print...
docs for CQL are up covering the geotools ECQL extensions
docs did you know did you know CQL is “Contextual Query Language"? GeoTools provides a command line utility for you to try it out
thanks for the feedback - big long pages it is! docs Scary seeing all the GML parsing options in one place. Commit tomorrow
xml internals are done http://t.co/xPXeiqO including working tutorial of code generation for bindings
docs color brewer docs are up along classifier goodness
docs up for gt-graph; now with pictures so you can tell how the moving parts work together.
docs 110,000 words - sweet!
new function list with argument names; massive amount of work for little gain (sigh)
docs now lists unsupported modules (all of them, I put 27 place holders in for things with no docs)
docs, added code examples for kml based on a stackoverflow question
docs, you really wanted single page? Check out abstract datastore tutorial - that is one long page
docs function tutorial showing how plugin system works

Thanks to those who assisted in this process:

Michael Bedward for continuing to inspire on the geotools user list; a large portion of the documentation has been assembled based on his email over the years. He has also been great with ongoing reviews and feedback.
Justin DeOlivera for taking time to set up the sphinx build system; and also to the company he works for (OpenGeo) for providing the build box which publishes the documentation after every commit
Lee Breisacher for launching into GeoTools development with a review of the AbstractDataStore tutorial. This was the original tutorial for GeoTools 2, first start in DocBook (just like PostGIS docs)

The wiki used to hold the user guide will be shut off by CodeHaus in the coming weeks; thanks to CodeHaus for allowing us the extra breathing room.

GeoTools 8.0-M0 released

2011-04-28T08:14:00.000-07:00

The GeoTools 8.0-M0 release is now available for download:

This release is made in conjunction with a new user guide; available online and included as one of the above downloads.

This release features:

update to the latest ImageIO-EXT 1.1-RC1 allowing access to GDAL 1.7.3
new advanced tutorial on functions
updated datastore tutorial
improved description of available functions

For those building from source (or using maven):

gt-render-wkt : new unsupported module allowing definition of symbols as part of your SLD document using simple "well known text"

For more information please review the Release Notes:

Release Notes

For more information on GeoTools and the 8.0 series:

Enjoy,
The GeoTools Community

GeoTools 8

2011-04-10T16:43:00.000-07:00

GeoTools is changing the version numbering system used setting the next release target as GeoTools 8.

This change "drops the 2" and brings GeoTools releases in line with traditional major.minor.patch release numbering.

Dropping the 2

This also marks the final step towards calling the project "GeoTools" (rather than "GeoTools 2"). The GeoTools 1 project was started in 1996, and the GeoTools 2 project started up in 2002 as a ground up rewrite. By changing version numbers today we are committing to users of the GeoTools library that we can avoid a ground up rewrite in the future. The development team has been able to successfully grow the library and take on an amazing range of functionality in an incremental manner. We have every confidence in our development team, user community (and the polices we use to keep things running smoothly).

Details

For details on what has been done and the motivations behind it the change proposal is here:

Skip GeoTools 3

For more information on the version numbers and what they mean the effected pages of the developers guide are:

Finally thanks to Jan De Moerloose from the Geomajas project who's questions on the user list lead to this change in policy.

8-SNAPSHOT

The maven snapshot repository is already hosting 8-SNAPSHOT as the result of nightly builds, and we should be in position to release a 8.0-M0 milestone release shortly.

If you were previously using 2.8-SNAPSHOT you can update your maven dependencies with the following:

    <properties>
        <geotools.version>8-SNAPSHOT</geotools.version>
    </properties>
    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.geotools</groupId>
            <artifactId>gt-main</artifactId>
            <version>${geotools.version}</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.geotools</groupId>
            <artifactId>gt-epsg-hsql</artifactId>
            <version>${geotools.version}</version>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>

GeoTools 2.7.0 Released

2011-03-23T19:40:00.000-07:00

The GeoTools team is happy to announce the official release of GeoTools 2.7.0, now available for download.

GeoTools 2.7 is a major milestone for the project. Some of the highlights of the 2.7 branch include (in no particular order):

Postgis 1.5 geography support
EPSG database upgrade to version 7.5
JDBC virtual table / sql view support
Application schema / complex feature support
GML 3.2 support
Image mosaic improvements such as multi-threading, automatic building, and support for tiles with different projections/resolutions
Labeling improvements, mixed bidirectional layout
Greatly improved raster re-projection performance
Faster rendering for large datasets, layers with large geometries, and maps composed of many vector layers
Shapefile performance improvements, and the generation of more compact indexes
SLD 1.1/ Symbology Encoding 1.1 support
API cleanup
Docs translated to sphinx

And much more that is worthy of making the list. There have also been some notable improvements since 2.7-RC2:

GML3 Arc and Circle support
Jenks Natural Breaks Classification algorithm
Support for EckertIV, Mollweide, and Winkel Tripel projections
SQL Server integrated security option

And as usual a heap of bug fixes. You can check out the entire 2.7.x change log in JIRA.

Download 2.7.0 and check it out. Before upgrading be sure to checkout the upgrade to 2.7.x guide. Try out the release and let us know of any issues in the bug tracker or on the mailing list.

Thanks for using GeoTools!

- The GeoTools Community

GeoTools 2.6.6 released

2011-03-19T08:28:00.000-07:00

GeoTools 2.6.6 was created on Marth 19th, 2011:

This release contains a number of minor bug fixes and improvements, and marks the end of the 2.6.x series. The stable development continues on the 2.7.x series, which is about to be released as 2.7.0 final.

This release is made in conjunction with GeoServer 2.0.3.

For more information please review the Release Notes:

2.6.6 Release Notes.

For more information on GeoTools and the 2.6 series:

GeoTools 2.7-RC2 Released

2011-02-21T14:35:00.000-08:00

The GeoTools project is happy to announce the second release candidate for GeoTools 2.7, now available for download.

Notable features and bug fixes added since 2.7-RC1 include:

ability to extract massive data sets from mosaics without incurring heavy memory load (due to improved ROI management)
increased mosaic flexibility, which can now be fed the set of tiles programmatically
mosaics can now handle tiles with different projections/resolutions
support for labels with mixed bidirectional layout
use a provided charset when parsing the DBF header (not just the contents)
native support for unique visitor in JDBC data stores
the developer guide has been translated to Sphinx and is now available on geotools.org

And more. Check out the change log for all the information.

Download 2.7-RC2 now. You can help GeoTools get to the official 2.7.0 release by trying out the release candidate and reporting any issues encountered in the bug tracker or on the mailing list.

Thanks for supporting GeoTools!

- The GeoTools Community

GeoTools 2.7-RC1 Released

2011-01-31T07:16:00.000-08:00

The GeoTools project is happy to announce the first release candidate for GeoTools 2.7, now available for download.

Notable features and bug fixes added since 2.7-beta1 include:

labelling improvements with regard to handling spaces
XML encoder fixes to more robustly handle encoding while under heavy loads
better raster band naming when colour interpretation not available for a band
improvements to WMS client regarding GetFeatureInfo and asking MapServer for transparent PNGs

And more. Check out the change log for all the information.

Download 2.7-RC1 now. You can help GeoTools get to the official 2.7.0 release by trying out the release candidate and reporting any issues encountered in the bug tracker or on the mailing list.

Thanks for supporting GeoTools!

- The GeoTools Community

End of GeoAPI involvement

2011-01-17T18:17:00.000-08:00

The upcoming release of GeoTools represents a turning point for the GeoTools project - we are no longer taking part in GeoAPI.

Back in the dawn of time (well 2003) the GeoTools project started an experiment, and outreach program in the form of the GeoAPI project. Specifically this was an effort to collaborate with the deegree library (makes sense as both projects are LGPL and are working in the same domain).

Although not successful in its original goals of collaboration the GeoAPI project served as a great line of communication to the standards community. We would like to thank many of the amazing individuals who contributed their time, effort and expertise and extend an invitation for direct collaboration in the future.

A few things to keep in mind:

We must emphasis that this decision does not break any client code
The org.opengis interfaces will remain in the GeoTools library as part of the gt-opengis module
As part of this change a lot of "deprecations" have already been cleaned up (representing areas of GeoAPI where the standard had passed out of fashion)
GeoTools is committed to providing a stable API for your next (or current) Java project

The GeoAPI project is survived as an OGC Working group.

GeoTools 2.7-beta Released

2010-12-17T16:57:00.000-08:00

GeoTools 2.7-beta has been released and is now available for download.

Notable features added since 2.7-M4 include much improved performance of raster re-projection, and a SLD 1.1 / Symbology Encoding 1.1 parser.

This release also removes dependency on the GeoAPI project, rolling those interfaces into a new gt-opengis module. This removes many deprecations in the GeoTools code base while still remaining 100% api compatible.

As usual this release also contains a number of key bug fixes. See the change log for all the details.

Try out the release and report any issues encountered in the bug tracker or on the mailing list.

- The GeoTools Community

GeoTools 2.7-M4 released

2010-12-01T09:05:00.000-08:00

The GeoTools 2.7-M4 release is now available for download:

Release Notes:

2.7-M4 Release Notes

For more information please visit:

Enjoy,  The GeoTools Community

GeoSpatial for Java Workbooks available

2010-09-21T16:39:00.000-07:00

It has now been a couple of weeks since foss4g and life is returning to normal. Thanks to everyone who contributed to a great experience. Part of that great experience was the workshop program; facilities were excellent; that staff helpful and due to a bit of scheduling fun the GeoSpatial for Java workshop was packed.

Justin and Jody were on hand for an intensive hands-on workshop "GeoSpatial for Java". This workshop offered an introduction to GIS concepts for Java developers - which is a really nice introduction since you can try out ideas and see how they work using running code.

The workshop materials have been published here:

http://docs.geotools.org/latest/tutorials/

These workbooks are detailed step by step instructions written in a "code first" style. This allows you to carefully go through the steps required to produce runnable code. If you have any questions about the concepts or ideas covered you can continue reading for the background information.

Geospatial for Java

View more presentations from jgarnett.

This tutorial information has been gathered up in the "sphinx" documentation system; and pulls directly from Java source code examples that are built as part of our GeoTools nightly build.

Thanks to Justin for his help in setting up the sphinx nightly build; and if anyone is good at sphinx "rst2pdf" I would love to get this content out in printable form.

GeoTools Maven Repository Reminder

2010-09-20T14:31:00.000-07:00

The original GeoTools maven repository at Refractions.net is down at the moment; for projects still making use of historical versions of GeoTools we encourage you to switch to our main repository.

To make the switch you will need to add the following to your maven pom.xml file:

http://download.osgeo.org/webdav/geotools/

OpenGeo has also kindly provided a high performance maven repository for SNAPSHOT releases; so if you are interested in the latest and greatest (populated by a nightly build) you can add the following:

http://repo.opengeo.org/

We would of course like to thank Refractions, OSGeo and OpenGeo for their community support. Setting up a public maven repository is a large commitment that is often transparent to those making use of the service.

We encourage sponsorship and donations to the OSGeo Foundation, and you are welcome to check out the commercial services offered by Refractions and OpenGeo. Let them know we sent you :-)

GeoTools 2.7-M3 Released

2010-09-02T14:33:00.000-07:00

GeoTools 2.7-M3 was created on Sept 03, 2010:

For more information please review the Release Notes:

Release Notes

For more information on GeoTools and the 2.7 series:

GeoTools 2.6.5 Released

2010-08-12T21:23:00.001-07:00

GeoTools 2.6.5 was created on August 8th, 2010:

New features for this release:

Support for "Units of Measure" when drawing allowing symbol size or line width to be supplied with real
world units such as 10km.
DataStore implementations can now allow users a chance to specify their own FeatureID (used to supply your
own primary key value when adding information to a database)
Bridge to JFreeChat allowing JFreeChat to offer simple plotting of Geometry

Highlights:

Reorganised website documentation with both stable and development javadocs avalable
Reorganised website documentation with both stable and development sphinx available
Coordinate Reference System definitions are now provided by EPSG Database 7.5 (when working with epsg-h2 or epsg-hsql)
Improvements to rendering symbols: correct handling of DPI parameter, fixes when working with SVG symbols,

This release is made in conjunction with uDig 1.2.0.

For more information please review the Release Notes:

2.6.5 Release Notes.

For more information on GeoTools and the 2.6 series:

GeoTools 2.7-M2 Released

2010-08-02T18:30:00.000-07:00

GeoTools 2.7-M2 was created on July 18, 2010:

This release is made in conjunction with FOSS4G Workshop materials, this message was delayed while negotiating recent OSGeo website changes. For those using maven the release is now available on our project maven repository.

For more information please review the Release Notes:

Release Notes.

For more information on GeoTools and the 2.7 series:

GeoTools 2.7-M1 Released

2010-06-22T04:49:00.000-07:00

Second milestone release in the 2.7 series wraps up a refractor of the classes used to make maps. We are also gathering up our website and documentation in preparation for the 2.7 release.

GeoTools 2.7-M1 was created on June 21, 2010 and is now available for download:

This release features:

MapContext Refactor: simplified map mapping with specific layer classes for each type of content
Allow inserts to use existing feature ID: allows a feature id to be provided as part of an FeatureStore.addFeatures method call.
GEOT-3075 Add support for Postgis 1.5 geography columns
Upgrade EPSG database to version 7.5: The epsgh-hsql and epsg-h2 plugins were updated with the latest EPSG database. The light epsg-wkt content has also been updated to match

The 2.7 series features:

Unit of Measure support for styling; allowing line symbolizer width to be specified in meters (thanks to Jonathan Milton)
JDBC Virtual Table

For more information please review the Release Notes:

Release Notes

For more information on GeoTools and the 2.7 series:

GeoTools 2.7-M0 Released

2010-05-28T01:24:00.000-07:00

GeoTools 2.7-M0 is now available for download:

In keeping with the usability and quality theme of the 2.7.x series this release focuses on simplifications to the GeoTools api. While this is the first milestone release made to the public the branch has been ongoing for eight months resulting in an impressive number of resolved issues. As an example 158 issues were closed in the last 30 days.

This is a bug fix release made to solicit feedback from the geotools users list on several recent api changes:

Clean up Generics from DataStore and Query as Class present two simplifications offering an easier start for those using GeoTools for the first time.
FeatureStore modifyFeature by Name allows features to be modified using a Name, rathern then requiring users to look up metadata prior to modifying content

The download artefacts include examples for 2.7-M0 showing the use of SimpleFeatureCollection and SimpleFeatureSource.

For more information please review the Release Notes:

Release Notes

For more information on GeoTools and the 2.7 series:

Enjoy,
The GeoTools Community

GeoTools 2.6.4 Released

2010-05-19T19:20:00.000-07:00

The GeoTools 2.6.4 release is now available for download:

This is a bug fix release made in conjunction with uDig 1.2-RC3.

This release adds support for Oracle Georaster access as the result of a productive collaboration between Christian and Baskar. It is great to see developers from different organisations combine forces.

There are many small but interesting improvements in the release notes. I am exited by the new interpolate functions which will be very useful when styling maps, generated SLD files no longer write out "default" values which will make for a more readable result.

This release also features more documentation then normal; we have exported out the 2.6.4 documentation from our website and the users guide. It is nice to have archives of this material that match a specific release.

For more information please review the Release Notes:

Release Notes

For more information on GeoTools and the 2.6 series:

Enjoy,
The GeoTools Community

Oracle GeoRaster & Custom JDBC Access

2010-05-12T04:33:00.000-07:00

Coming with version 2.6.4, the Imagemosiac-jdbc module adds support for storing image/raster data in a customized database layout. This enables integration of an already existing database table structure into geotools.

The standard imagemosiac-jdbc module is based on a predefined table setup and is useful if you start importing your image data in a SQL database. Handling tiles and pyramids is supported.

For special use cases, other database designs may be necessary . The module was redesigned to encapsulate JDBC Access in a single plugin. Developing a customized JDBC Access plugin will create the missing link between the image composing logic and a custom database layout.

Additionally, users having an existing image database could make their data available for developers using the geotools API.

Look at the documentation .

A first implementation of this concept is a plugin for Oracle GeoRaster integrating the Oracle RASTER data type into imagemosaic-jdbc.

Again, look at the documentation .

Open Trip Planner

2010-05-04T16:42:00.000-07:00

One of the really cool parts of GeoTools is the graph module - which offers services similar to PGRouting; but years before PGRounting :-) The code is actually a port of an original JUMP graph plugin done by Refractions; and has been steadily improved by grad students over the years in GeoTools.

While I have used this module myself; one thing I am always on the look out for is creative uses of the GeoTools library for this blog; and this week on the user list I was pointed in the direction of OpenTripPlanner.

Thanks to Nicholas from the user list for the pointer; Nicholas is a contributor the Open Trip Planner project.

Now before you get too excited; just as with PGRouting; the ability to go from point A to point B (with a few waypoints along the way) is really dependent on the quality of your data and how much information you have about the intersections (turn directions and so forth).

Check out the links to both OpenTripPlanner and the GeoTools graph module; perhaps you can use a bit of direction in your next Java project.

Update: After hunting in the internals it looks like OpenTripPlanner has there own implementation of graph functionality and are using GeoTools for data access.

A faster, better GeoTools 2.7

2010-04-30T21:48:00.000-07:00

GeoTools 2.7.x is current development branch (or "trunk"). Consider this a sneak peak of some of the ideas that are taking shape for the future.

First up we have speed. One of the common use-cases we have on the geotools-gt2-users email list is displaying a Map in a Java Swing application. Still it is nice to see something; especially when learning. With this in mind we have recast our initial introduction tutorials to be a bit more visual.

Out of the box GeoTools focus on providing a standard compliant SLD rendering engine. This engine is not specific to display - and actually never loads data into memory (it simply streams it off disk onto the screen).

In the interest of performance Andrea has donated a wrapper that will cache data in memory (storing it in a JTS spatial index).

File file = JFileDataStoreChooser.showOpenFile("shp", null);

FileDataStore store = FileDataStoreFinder.getDataStore(file);

FeatureSource featureSource = store.getFeatureSource();

CachingFeatureSource cache = new CachingFeatureSource(featureSource);

MapContext map = new DefaultMapContext();

map.setTitle("Using cached features");

map.addLayer(cache, null);

JMapFrame.showMap(map);

For more details please see the updated (and aptly named) Quickstart. This functionality has been back ported to 2.6.x and we are soliciting feedback (and test cases) from users.

Returning to 2.7 we have two great usability improvements:

For the longest time we have had a Query interface and a DefaultQuery implementation. These have been combined making code examples just that much readable.
We introduced the use of Generics to support application schema work. While we now have a happy team working on application schema; it did impact readably.
Specifically FeatureCollection < SimpleFeatureType, SimpleFeature > gets tiring.
Introducing SimpleFeatureCollection to the rescue.

With this in mind a couple of recent proposals have allowed us to write the following:

SimpleFeatureSource source = dataStore.getFeatureSource( typeName );

Query query = new Query( typeName, filter, attributes );

SimpleFeatureCollection features = source.getFeatures(query);

It is all good!

If you are using maven switch to 2.7-SNAPSHOT to try out these improvements today; we will issue a milestone release laster this month.

GeoTools 2.6.3 released

2010-03-26T18:58:00.001-07:00

The GeoTools project is pleased to announce the release of GeoTools version 2.6.3.

This release is a bug fix release (27 issues fixed) made in conjunction with uDig 1.2-RC2. A special thank you to to community members that submitted patches this release.

Improvements and new capabilities:

Improvements to JMapPane thanks to an active user list
Support for WMS Extent and Dimension information
Support for the Robinson projection

We also have a few internal improvements:

Support for Online Test cases using JUnit4

For the complete list please review the 2.6.3 release notes.

GeoTools 2.6.3 is available from source forge:

- http://sourceforge.net/projects/geotools/files/

Or from our public maven or subversion repositories:

- http://download.osgeo.org/webdav/geotools/

- http://svn.osgeo.org/geotools/tags/2.6.3

The GeoTools Community

GeoTools 2.6.2 released

2010-03-04T18:35:00.000-08:00

The GeoTools project is pleased to announce the release of GeoTools version 2.6.2.

This release is mostly intended to provide a number of important bug-fixes, but there are also some new features and improvements for your programming pleasure including:

The rendering system now has the ability to draw polygon fills and SVGs as vectors and draw marks with arbitrary sizes.
GeoTools applications can now use the H2 database with a spatial index provided by Hatbox.
Support added for polyconic projections.

Refer to the 2.6.2 release notes for full details.

You can download the complete GeoTools 2.6.2 source distribution from Sourceforge, or click the 'View all files' button on that page for separate downloads for pre-compiled binaries and javadocs. You can also download the source code with your favourite Subversion client from: http://svn.osgeo.org/geotools/tags/2.6.2

If you use Maven as your build tool, simply update the version number for GeoTools modules in your pom.xml files to "2.6.2".

Share and enjoy !
The GeoTools Community

Make your own map-based mashup

2010-03-02T15:52:00.001-08:00

IBM produced a nice tutorial making use of GeoTools, JTS and SkateKML with the ever present OpenLayers and PostGIS database.

The tutorial mostly uses the MathTransform services to handle coordinates. You can actually use GeoTools DataStore to perform the SQL query for you resulting in a FeatureCollection. The IBM tutorial performs these steps by hand (Constructing the SQL and translating Well Known Binary into a JTS Geometry etc...).

For more information on using GeoTools FeatureCollection please review QueryLab (java).

GeoTools continuous map wrapping

2010-02-24T23:53:00.000-08:00

Recently the GeoTools team under GeoSolutions' funding has addressed an issue with the rendering module that was preventing users from drawing polygons crossing the dateline change, or, to put it another way, to be able to have maps that were wrapping like continuous wrapped maps from Google.

As an example specific use case involved the use of a projection in which the dateline change has been moved away from the usual -180/+180 by using a non standard central meridian
The result, prior to the work described here, does not look so good across the discontinuity, as shown below

The problem was that our renderer was performing point by point reprojections, therefore when a point was crossing the dateline the modular math we used kicked in, transforming +181 -> -179. This meant that the next point, when crossing the dateline, was moved to the other side of the world.

In order to perform proper processing of projection singularities and dateline wrapping on selected projections, in particular, Mercator, Transverse Mercator, and flat geographic, we have had to modify the renderer in its projection handling part. The outcome is that we finally have obtained seamless wrapping maps similar to the Google ones, as shown here:

Continents layer from Oracle datastore in EPSG:3329

Continents layer from Oracle datastore in EPSG:90013

You can try this work yourself starting from GeoTools 2.5.x and above. On the development versions of the two software the tweak is automatically applied while on the other side for the stable versions you need to specify two JVM options:
-DADVANCED_PROJECTION_ HANDLING=true
-DUSE_STREAMING_RENDERER=true

A big thanks goes to Andrea Aime who has been hired for the implementation of this feature.

GeoTools 2.6.1 Released

2010-01-14T05:01:00.000-08:00

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.

Release Notes:

2.6.1 Release Notes

For more information please visit:

Enjoy,  The GeoTools Community

Polyconic

2010-01-10T20:44:00.000-08:00

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.

FOSS4G GeoTools Tutorials

2009-11-19T04:27:00.000-08:00

Catching up on post FOSS4G activities; one of the items has been presenters making their materials available under creative commons for the foss4g website to publish.

With that in mind I am pleased to make the GeoTools tutorials from FOSS4g 2009 available under a create commons license! If you would like the original open office documents (perhaps to translate!) give us a shout on geotools-devel email list and we can send them over.

To start out with here are the slides providing a bit of background and the order of the workbooks:

- GeoSpatialForJavaSlides

QUICKSTART

The initial "quickstart" is available in two flavours depending on the IDE you use:

- GeoToolsNetBeansQuickstart

- GeoToolsEclipseQuickstart

This workbook walks you through creating an application to display a shapefile.

When you go through this quickstart you have a choice of using Maven to manage all your jars or to just download GeoTools an unzip it. The process of downloading GeoTools and putting it to work is a little tricky in that you cannot use all the jars at once - so this quickstart provides helpful step by step instructions.

TUTORIALS

The remaining workbooks are as follows:

I would really like to thank Michael Bedward who’s hard work and dedication has added greatly to the GeoTools community. Also thanks to Tyler for pulling together a common look for OSGeo content; and finally those attending the FOSS4G 2009 tutorial in person.

I notice that the tutorial evaluation page is still open for anyone who missed it during the conference.

GeoTools 2.6.0 released

2009-10-18T22:46:00.000-07:00

We are pleased to announce the long awaited release of GeoTools 2.6.0.

New features and improvements since GeoTools 2.5.x

Much of the effort in developing GeoTools 2.6 has been focussed on quality and performance but there are also a number of new features including :

The gt-process module now makes it possible to integrate external libraries such as Sextante into GeoTools applications. It also now provides vector to raster conversion.
The new gt-swing module with a basic collection of GUI components, many of which can be seen in use in our Quickstart and example applications.
A cleaner set of modules with a number of previously unmaintained and redundant modules being removed.

Getting this release

You can download the binary, source and javadoc distributions as zip files from SourceForge.

The source code can be downloaded using your favourite Subversion client from: http://svn.osgeo.org/geotools/tags/2.6.0

Those of you using Maven as your build tool can simply change the version for GeoTools artifacts to 2.6.0 in your pom.xml.

Finally, you can browse the javadocs for this release online.

Enjoy !

GeoTools 2.5.8 Released

2009-10-16T23:21:00.000-07:00

It's been a big week for GeoTools releases, with both 2.6-RC1 and 2.5.8 hitting the streets.

GeoTools 2.5.8 has seen a number of changes including:

Improvements Shapefile locking
Various fixes to ImageMosaic stability
Support for JDBC aggregate functions

To try out the latest release, head on over to the downloads page.

GeoTools 2.6 has finally reached release candidacy, with the resolution
of a few key issues, including:

Solving a crash when reading ECW files
Updated the WCS 1.1 EMP model
Resolved a reader exception caused by FastBBox filters
The long-awaited return of the Javadoc build

For more information look to the 2.6.x branch page of the GeoTools wiki.

Cold cat kills Java 5

2009-08-29T18:57:00.000-07:00

I have just upgraded to Snow Leopard - a few little visual tweaks is nothing to write home about; sounds like most of the effort is focused making the different parts of the operating system 64 bit. The original Leopard came with Java 6 but it was not the default ... for command line applications and applets (does anyone use those?) Java 5 was in use. You could hunt down Java 6 on your hard drive and configure tomcat or eclipse to use it if you liked.

But the upgrade also removed my copy of Java 5! These days even Sun wants to charge extra for any kind of Java 5 support; this is an issue for many Java Enterprise Edition users who are not in a position to upgrade due to corporate policy, version of websphere used etc...

This was my first time building GeoTools on mac with Java 6 - and it did not work (running out of memory during the build). Changing between 32 and 64 bit Java just changed what module the build process failed in. Pointing to a problem with the build tool call Maven; upgrading to 2.2.1 and giving it a lot more memory seems to have done the trick - but I am not really convinced.

If you would like to switch between Java versions:

Use spotlight to find the Java Preferences
Shuffle which version of Java is used

Interestingly I could *see* the older versions of Java on my hard drive - turns out they were all symbolic links to the same Java 6. The path /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions contains a list of what is available.

Other than this only a few of my usual tools required upgrading:

An update to Skitch (used to take the above screen snaps)

Maven 2.2.1

GeoTools 2.5.7

2009-08-19T20:38:00.000-07:00

I am pleased to announce the release of GeoTools 2.5.7, which is now available for download. While there are a number of new features included in this release, such as ArcSDE versioning and non-spatial table support and improvements to the performance and stability of filters and the next-generation JDBC datastores, there is more exciting news for this release. At least, it is for me.

This release marks LISAsoft's first official foray into the release processes of GeoTools. Assisted by veteran release managers Jody Garnett and Justin Deoliveira, and some very clear and well documented build processes, I only ran into a few troubles. For those of you that are familiar with the release process of these projects, you'll know where those troubles live; the cite testing for GeoServer. But patience prevailed and the release was put out late last week.

New Look

2009-08-17T19:26:00.000-07:00

We are pleased to announce a new look for the GeoTools website hosted by OSGeo.

Thanks to Justin for setting up sphinx templates used to generate the website; this will allow fold source code examples into our documentation.

Justin was also kind enough to arrange a new GeoTools logo:

JDBC Next Generation

2009-07-06T03:35:00.000-07:00

In recent weeks the GeoTools developers have been working hard on moving a new set of data stores code named "JDBC Next Generation" to the supported part of the GeoTools library. And we are happy to announce that the work is complete!

The new JDBC data stores provide support for a variety of database back ends such as PostGIS, Oracle, DB2, and H2. MySQL and SQL Server are also supported but still lack a bit of functionality in terms of support for spatial indexing. So if you are a developer who would like to see first class support for these databases, please join us as volunteers, new contributors are always welcome. A data store for Spatialite is currently in the works as well.

The new data stores come with a number of benefits. One is support for prepared statements, which while improving security against SQL injection attacks, also improves performance in some cases such as Oracle. Prepared statements also provide better date/time handling. Another improvement is support for JNDI connections which allows data stores to use database connections defined by the environment, such as a Tomcat web container or an Oracle application server.

There are also plenty of benefits for the developer as well. The new architecture promotes much more code reuse via the use of "dialects", an idea taken from the Hibernate architecture. The upshot of which is that implementing support for new databases is much simpler and involves implementing a much smaller set of classes. Test coverage with the new data stores is also much increased with a built in test framework that makes it easy to add new tests.

Some projects like GeoServer have already started shipping the new data stores as extensions. Which means they have already received some good testing. The uDig developers are also planning to integrate the new data stores at their up and coming code sprint.

Look for the new data stores in the next GeoTools release!

Thanks Martin

2009-06-05T02:15:00.001-07:00

Martin Desruisseaux has recently stepped down, after devoting many years of service to the GeoTools community. Martin has been the long time module maintainer of our referencing module.

Martin joined GeoTools as part of a collaboration between his project (SeaGIS) and our founder James Macgill's applet based GeoTools 1.0 project. It was the collaboration between these two individuals that really kick started the GeoTools 2 project. Martin brought a rigorous scientific perspective to the project. He was also instrumental in GeoTools adopting OGC standards which initially served as as way to reduce the documentation burden of the library. The community gradually came to appreciate the value of the standards in providing common names and concepts, indeed a common reference point, for development work.

The Dynamic Desruisseaux-Macgill Duo's second experiment was the GeoAPI project, prompted by the need to come to grips with large XML based standards for Java developers and as an out reach to other libraries of the time such as Deegree and GeOxygen. GeoAPI has since taken on a life as its own: first being aligned with "GO-1" and then, through Martin's involvement, becoming a distinct GeoAPI working group.

We would like to sincerely thank Martin for his many, major contributions to GeoTools and we look forward to future collaborations as they arise.

New PMC members: GeoTools is moving forward

2009-06-04T09:53:00.001-07:00

We are glad to announce that three new members have been appointed recently to the GeoTools Project Management Committee, the entity that is responsible for steering the GeoTools projects itself. The new members are Michael Bedward, Christian Mueller and Ben Caradoc-Davies, you can find a brief bio down below.

We would to thank outgoing PMC member Martin Desruisseaux for his years of service to the GeoTools community.

The GeoTools project has recently been going through major changes, with a few long-term members leaving to follow their interests. One benefit of these changes for GeoTools has been to provide fresh ideas and new momentum. A major review of the code base is presently underway to make the library more coherent, more reliable and easier to use.

Michael Bedward is an ecologist with the Department of Environment and Climate Change, Sydney, Australia. He has over twenty years of professional experience in ecological field studies, vegetation mapping, conservation planning, statistical analysis of complex data and simulation modelling. His research has been regularly published in Australian and international scientific journals and presented at numerous conferences and workshops. Michael’s current research is
concerned with predicting the dynamics and extinction risk of wildlife populations in landscapes subject to past and continuing habitat destruction, wildfire and climatic fluctuations. This work brings together remotely sensed geospatial data, field observations and specially developed simulation models.

Christian Mueller works as an IT-professional since 25 years. He studied computer science at the Technical University of Vienna and is now about to finish his GIS postgraduate study at the university of Salzburg, Austria. The focus of his work is about DB systems, operating systems, programming and since 3 years, geographical information systems. Most of the knowledge is based on IBM and Open Source products. At the moment he is building up a GIS infrastructure for the a big Austrian enterprise collecting and visualizing statistical data and to prepare this enterprise for the INSPIRE directive of the European Community. At the moment of this writing, he is a module maintainer for three modules, working on his fourth module during the GSOC 2009.

Ben Caradoc-Davies obtained his doctorate in computational physics from the University of Otago, New Zealand in 2000, for numerical studies of vortex dynamics in Bose-Einstein condensates. Since 2001, he has worked as a software developer in Perth, Western Australia. His experience includes development of software for: oceanographic and meteorological modelling, data processing, and analysis, in support of the offshore oil and gas industries; geophysical quantitative interpretation for resource exploration; and since 2007, the exchange of geoscience information via interoperable web services. Ben currently works for CSIRO Exploration and Mining [1] as the lead developer of the Web Feature Service component of the AuScope Spatial Information Services Stack [2]. In this role, he is maintainer of the application schema (complex feature) modules of GeoTools and GeoServer, and collaborates with AuScope stakeholders and GeoScience Markup Language (GeoSciML) Testbed participants to improve GeoSciML support in GeoTools and GeoServer. Ben is an open source software fanatic, and has been a Linux systems administrator since 1995. Ben is happy to use proprietary software where it belongs: on game consoles.

[1] The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation is Australia's national science agency.
http://www.csiro.au/

[2] AuScope Ltd is funded under the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS), an Australian Commonwealth Government Programme.
http://www.auscope.org.au/category.php?id=10

First Post

2009-05-20T13:56:00.000-07:00

This blog is taking over from the following news feed:

- GeoTools Blog Posts from Confluence Wiki

This step was taken to avoid confusing developer communication (IRC meetings for example) with public communication!

GeoTools previously ran the following blog explicitly for IRC meeting minuets:

- http://gtirc.blogspot.com/