From MapbenderWiki

Mapbender - Development History

This page shows the development of the Mapbender software since its inception in 2001 until it became part of the OSGeo.

For the German Version please go to the page Entwicklungsgeschichte.

Today

If you use Mapbender in a professional context and like to get involved into the development, please contact the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. There you have the possibility to get in contact with the user community through the Mailing Lists. In the next step you may request for an official role within the Mapbender project. Find further information at the site of the foundation: http://www.osgeo.org

How alive is Mapbender?

The code base has developed from a proprietary piece of software that was released as Free Software in 2003. Code has been managed in a CVS only as of 2005 when the developers learned the need to do so. In 2006 the code moved to the current SVN repository and all history was lost (it is still available as a tar ball but it has not been imported into the current SVN). Therefore the Ohloh metrics of Mapbender show only the more recent part of development. They might give some insight on the projects state anyway.

2001 to 2006 - descending

2006.03.31

Many projects presented at the FOSSGIS conference use Mapbender software. The most extensive use of Mapbender focuses on its use as a city map service liek the one operated by the City of Bonn. There they even implemented an extensions to add an OGC WTS (Web Terrain Services) interface. This system is also tightly integrated with a Content Management System (CMS). Mapbender developes into a 'Geo CMS'. One new focus of Mapbender development wiill be a light weight meta data and catalog system as the available standards unfortunately are quite unusable. Mapbender already implements some broker functionality based on the existing Login-, AddWMS- and ContextDocument modules.

2006.03.13

The application FIONA is online. A special highlight is the security architecture, which is similar to the one implemented for the Ministry of Commerce, Infrastructure, Agriculture and Viticulture of the Federal State of Rhineland Palatinate, but extended by an external authentication component (HIT-method). The productive environment works on two mirror systems to ensure best reliability. The GIS components of this application consist of PostgreSQL/PostGIS database, MapServer, GeoServer and Mapbender, all licensed as Free and Open Source Software.

2006.03.10

Mapbender Version 2.2.3 is ready for download. Find all informations about innovations within the version history. Mapbender 2.2.3 is also the last version, which will be available at SourceForge. Future versions can be found at the Mapbender domain in the Open Source Geospatial Foundation, see https://mapbender.osgeo.org. This migration will include the migration to SVN software.

2006.02.27

Preparations started for the Mapbender development migration into the new development enviroment hosted initially at CollabNet. Besides that the OSGeo Incubation process has been initialized. For further information see: OSGeo Wiki. Stable, official informations can be found in this Wiki and on the OSGeo-site: https://mapbender.osgeo.org

2006.02.04

Mapbender is one of the eight initial projects of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo). Together with GDAL/OGR, MapServer, MapGuide Open Source, MapBuilder, Geotools, GRASS and OSSIM, Mapbender belongs to the core of the Free and Open Source Software Projects of the OSGeo Foundation.

2005.11.10

Mapbender is presented at the brazilian MapServer User Meeting in 2005. The cooperation with Team G10 at the University of Itjai was deepened and a first Brazilian OGC WMS service has been added to the Mapbender test bed.

2005.06.16

Mapbender is presented at the OSG '05 with several presentations. There was a really good exchange of informations with the developers from the MapBuilder and ka-map projects, both started to use AJAX technology recently. Some modules are already used by all of the three projects. It is planned to further this collaboration in the future.

2005.04.04

FLOrlp is Online. Now the first big application with client side digitize functionality (using OGC WFS) is online. This system provides access to public geodata for more several thousand farmers and their representatives. One focus of the architecture concerns the security of the data, confidentiality and access protection. The demo system is available now.

2005.04.29

With more than 80 participants from Germany, Austria and Switzerland the Mapbender User Meeting was a great success. The developer meeting at the end of the conference was used to talk about future developments.

2005.03.10

The first Mapbender User Meeting is held in Bonn on 29.04.2005.

2005.03.10

The application FLOrlp of the Ministry of Commerce, Infrastructure, Agriculture and Viticulture of the Federal State of Rhineland Palatinate goes online (http://www.flo.rlp.de). This application is implemented completely using Free Software and exclusively relies on OGC standards. A demo site is available at http://www.flo.rlp.de showing all functionality of the application except writing back to the database (which can only be done by registered users).

2005.01.26

Mapbender integrates WFS (Web Feature Server) as data sources for gazetteers. This is another milestone to improve interoperability. With this addition Mapbender can connect to all standardized geo data servers worldwide. Unfortunately the progress of deploying WFS services is very very slow all over the world.

2004.09.10

Preparations started to transfer the source code into the CVS (Concurrent Versioning System) at SourceForge. Now it will be much easier to switch between different releases and have partial updates. Besides stable releases in the download area, also new versions and bleeding edge development is available from the CVS directly. Read-only access is public, write access is limited to the development team.

2004.09.07

The new release of Mapbender2 is published at SourceForge. All known bugs of the last months are fixed. The data structure was improved and now contains additional style parameter. The module for updating WMS was implemented as discussed in the mailing list. The new release provides all necessary updates and SQL scripts to make an upgrade without needing to run a full new installation.

• 2004.08.30

The beta-version of the Mapbender2 Frameworks was downloaded more than 450 times within 2 month - that is much more then we expected! So we will strengthen our work to get the new relaese ready as soon as possible. Please take this opportunity to report bugs. Because of feature freeze, new functions will be implemented exclusively in versions MB 2.1 and MB 2.2.

2004.08.24

New services are added to the Interoperability Testbed. The DEMIS Web Map Server Software ist impressively fast and talks "clean" OGC WMS.

2004.08.16

"Accessibility" is on the focus of the development team. It is evaluated whether to restart the JavaScript-free "Mapbender PDA" application.

2004.08.14

The testing phase (10 weeks) of Mapbender V2 has been completed. The first full version of Mapbender 2 will be online in September 2004. To achieve that feature freeze starts now. Any new functionality will only be implemented in pre-release versions of Mapbender 2.1 and 2.2.

2004.07.24

Mapbender is registered in the list of Software Downloads of the GDI-DE - Geoportal.Bund.

2004.07.14

The Free Software WMS Client Framework Mapbender is used in productive environments in five projects of the GDI-NRW (an initiative of the state of Northrhine Wesphalia, Germany to promote the use of standards and interoperability).

2004.07.01

An OGC WMS testbed using Mabender software is put into operation. Approximately every other week a new web map service is added to a demo interface. Anybody who operates their own WMS are invited to contact the user Mailing list.

2004.06.26

Tests of the new print module are successful.

2004.06.01

The English language documentation is published.

2004.06.01

The new Mapbender version 2 is published.

2004.05.10

The German language version of the administration interfaces and documentation goes online.

2004.04.18

The new website (this one actually) of the project is launched using MediaWiki software. The content is migrated from ewiki to MediaWiki using some Perl scripts.

2004.04.14

First tests by clients, customers and development partners using the Mapbender prototype architecture provide good results. The City of Bonn stays with the old version of Mapbender 1.4 due to backwards compatibility and forks development.

2004.03.19

The Mapbender version 2 data model is ready for implementation. It will be a major launch and and break backward compatibility! THis step is necessary to many architectural changes in the software and data model.

2004.02.23

The Mapbender website is re-engineered, German language sections are added and separated from English language pages. Instead of hacking static pages a Wiki technology is introduced using eWiki Software.

2004.02.02

Mapbender version 1.4 is published as a stable release at SourceForge.

2004.01.05

The Mapbender Prototype "SPA" (City Map Services) with special functionality for the needs of citizens and a complete redesigned GUI (user interface) is created. Some new functionality is also added to the next pending Mapbender release which is to be published in Summer of 2004.

2003.12.17

The magic number of 1000 downloads from the official website has been reached. Unfortunately nobody knows how many of these downloads are used in productive environments. It is planed to publish a map showing Mapbender users and service providers.

2003.11.20

The Mapbender version 1.0.2 is published at SourceForge including several bug fixes and new functionality.

2003.10.23

The first 500 downloads of the software are counted on SourceForge. There seems to be a need for this type of web mapping client suite. The user community slowly starts to join development of the software, some enhancements and functionality is integrated into the next releases. The core team still consists of CCGIS staff.

2003.08.29

The first user mailing list for the Mapbender project is created.

2003.08.28

SourceForge affirms the registry of the project Mapbender, now it is an 'official' Open Source software project.

2003.08.23

Mapbender is registered at SourceForge. Status is adherent.

2003.08.22

New functionality is added to Mapbender, the version is updated to 1.0.1

2003.08.19

The domain MAPBENDER is registered for .de .org .com and .net. The homepage of the project is implemented in static HTML and contains some information and links about Mapbender.

2003.08.15

The first stable version 1.0.0 of the software Mapbender Client Suite is published under the GNU GPL License.

2003.05.12

The first official beta-version of the Client Suite of the Mapbender Frameworks is published.

2003.04.03

The CCGIS Client Suite is completely re-engineered. The goal is to build a development environment that allows users to create, deploy and maintain web mapping interfaces completely through web pages (fully web managed client).

At the same time the software is for the first time released under the GNU GPL License as Free and Open Source Software. The users of the proprietary CCGIS Client Suite consented to this change in philosophy. The new name of the Client Suite is changed into Mapbender.

2002.12.08

A new interface is added to the CCGIS Client Suite interface collection that is optimized to work with PDA. It uses HTML 3.2 therefore needs to work without JavaScript. It is connected to a local GPS positioning device (on the PDA) allowing to position the map to the current location.

2002.06.16

The CCGIS Client Suite goes productive in the City administration of Bonn. It can be accessed from 400 workstations within the intranet. Performance and scalability are still not well developed, the functionality is good and addresses most of the needs of the users.

2002.04.24

Enhancement of the user administration. It is possible now to allocate exact user authorisation and to restrict access to selected interface functionality to either individual users or groups of users. The HTML web mapping user interface is built dynamically for each individual user using the authorization information of that user as it is stored in the "database".

2001.11.23

The first stable version 1.0.0 of the der CCGIS Client Suite is released. The Client Suite implements the OGC WMT (Web Map Testbed) specification version 1.0.0 which is not yet a full standard reference but will be used for many years to come. Usability is optimized for the software SICAD/SD-IMS, one of the first German software packages that supported the OGC WMT 1.0.0 requests.

2001.10.08

First tests are run with the new PHP based Web Mapping Interface. One of the most important initial contributors is the administration of the City of Bonn. The software runs on a Windows operating system with an Internet Information server and uses a Microsoft Access "database" for storage of administrative data. The first OGC WMS service that is used to generate the maps comes from the (proprietary) software SICAD/SD-IMS.

2001.07.16

Planning for a PHP based Web Map Interface to manage OGC WMS services started. The new web mapping client is designed to suit the needs of largher organizations. The focus lies on making it easy to manage many users using different applications with different services. The name of the (initially proprietary) software product is CCGIS Client Suite. All the work is done by the company CCGIS, predecessor of the current WhereGroup.