GeoTools 2.5.8 Released

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

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:

1. Use spotlight to find the Java Preferences
   
   
2. 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

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

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

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

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

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