GeoTools 2.7.2 Released

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

• README.html
• geotools-2.7.2-bin.zip
• geotools-2.7.2-project.zip
• geotools-2.7.2-doc.zip
• geotools-2.7.2-welcome.zip

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:

• GeoTools 2.7.2 Release Notes
• geotools.org

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

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

GeoTools 2.7.1 has been released and is available for download:

• geotools-2.7.1-bin.zip
• geotools-2.7.1-project.zip
• geotools-2.7.1-javadoc.zip
• geotools-2.7.1-guide.zip

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

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

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

• geotools-8.0-M0-bin.zip
• geotools-8.0-M0-project.zip
• geotools-8.0-M0-doc.zip
• geotools-8.0-M0-userguide.zip

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:

• http://geotools.org
• 8.x
• Upgrade to 8.x

Enjoy,
The GeoTools Community

GeoTools 8

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:

• Versioning
• How to cut a release

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

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

• geotools-2.7.0-bin.zip
• geotools-2.7.0-project.zip
• geotools-2.7.0-doc.zip
• release notes

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