OSGeo-News Vol.1 2007 Mapbender

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A short introduction to Mapbender authored by Mapbender developers

Abstract

Mapbender is a webbased software for geodata management of OGC OWS (Open Geospatial Consortium Open Web Services) architectures. Mapbender provides web technology for managing spatial data services implemented in PHP, JavaScript and XML. It furthermore provides a data model and interfaces for displaying, navigating and querying OGC compliant map services. Additionally authentication and authorization services, OWS proxy functionality, management interfaces for user, group and service administration in WebGIS projects are included.

Introduction

The following article will shortly present the software `Mapbender'. After a short description of the software (see section XX) the history of the project will be presented (section XX). Afterwards two parts of main functionality -- management of geodata (section XX) and visualisation of geodata (section XX) -- are presented. This paper then explores some possible future implementations (section XX). Section XX will give guidance to examples and further information in the internet.

What is Mapbender?

The Mapbender Client Suite is a framework for managing spatial data service. It does \emph{not} contain any maps or map server software itself but it can display any existing interoperable service.

In Mapbender, maps are stacked on top of each other and they can then be distributed throughout the world via internet. Mapbender is the tip of the iceberg, a meta layer of software providing access to the Open Source Geospatial SDI (Spatial Data Infrastructure) stack (see http://www.osgeo.org/mapbender, accessed on 2007-03-05).

The software provides interfaces for displaying, navigating and querying OGC OWS services, e.g. WMS (Web Map Service), WFS (Web Feature Service), WFS-T (transactional WFS), WMC (Web Map Context). The Mapbender framework additionally provides interfaces for user and group administration and management functionality for accessing maps rendered and data served by OGC Open Web Services. The Mapbender database model has been designed to implement multi-client capabilities with respect to users, groups, interfaces and services. The following three basic components make up Mapbender:

  1. Users and Groups
  2. User Interfaces (graphic user interface)
  3. Map Services (OGC Open Web Services)

Currently the focus of development has shifted to WFS-T functionality, catalog and gazetteer services.

Short history of Mapbender

In July 2001 the german company CCGIS created the first proprietary PHP-based Web Map Interface: This product eventually became the basement of the current Mapbender. In November of that year the first version was published, already following many OGC standards.

In 2002 an installation of the suite serving about 400 users was succesfully established. The following year 2003 marks an important change in the history of the project:

  • The suite was completely redisigned to give users the ability to virtually change every aspect of the software in an easy way.
  • This meant that licensing of the product was changed to a free GNU GPL License.
  • Users, developers and licensees of the suite were being asked on their opinions on the issue of this change in philosophy.
  • The new name of the product was announced: `Mapbender'.

In October 2003 at least 500 downloads of the framework could be counted. Users seemed to fully accept the philosophy of the product. On year later in 2004 the software was being used in five official geodata-infrastructures of North Rhine-Westphalia. From June to August of that year the software was downloaded about 450 times. In April of 2005 the first user conference took place in Bonn, Germany.

In 2006 Mapbender became one of the eight starting projects of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo). Together with GDAL / OGR, MapServer, MapGuide Open Source, MapBuilder, Geotools, GRASS und OSSIM, Mapbender is now core member of the Free and Open Source Software Projects of the OSGeo Foundation.

The current stable version of the software is 2.4, which was released on 2006-07-31. The newest version is 2.4.1\,rc, which is a non-stable release candidate.

Functionality

Mapbender provides much functionality to manage and display geodata. Nearly all possible features of the suite can be tested online by everyone in this demo-application: http://www.mapbender.org/index.php/Demo.

Manage geodata

With Mapbender it is easy to manage geodata, both your own data and data from somewhere else in the world. References to geodata sources can be created, read, updated and deleted.

The software provides an interface for integration of webservices as WMS, WFS or WFT-T. It is possible to see capabilities of geo services and to react accordingly. Therefore your installation of mapbender might become your main database of available GI-services in the internet.

As Mapbender works well with other GIS products, only few steps have to be taken to publish your own data together with remote data in the web.

Visualize, navigate and query geodata

Not only can you manage your data, Mapbender provides many functions to help you visualize, navigate and query your data. Most of the features one knows form desktop GIS applications (e.\,g. ``pan visible map, ``move visible extent, ``set mapscale, ``zoom in and out, ``export to PDF and others) are integrated by default.

Additionaly, with Mapbender the users are enabled to search within a WFS. User simply can digitize new geoobject of all types and the properties of your data can be stored and retrieved using Web Map Context (WMC). Handling Metadata is easy as well as the administration of users and usergroups with different rights.

As all functionality is bundled in modules, it is easy to have a unique customized Mapbender installation with modules created for special purposes and standard modules.

A full alphabetical list of implemented GIS functionality can be found online at http://www.mapbender.org/index.php/Category:Modules.

Future Implementations

Mapbender is a dynamic project, which is constantly improving by input of the community. For future releases some changes and additional functionality are likely to be introduced.

It is planned to integrate an option for enhanced logging of user activity, and future releases are likely to have a more easier configurable printing module. The PDF printoput might be upgraded to support temporary geographic objects.

We plan to include a catalog services interface extension and functionality to create point GML (Geography Markup Language) with a mouse click. Enhance tree folder editing and online routing geometry are planned modules as well as the realisation of multilevel gazetteer services.

Future mapbender releases might have an integrated SLD (Styled Layer Descriptor) editor to help customize geodata. We furthermore explore possibilities of the direct import of import of shapefiles.

As mentioned above, any input by users is highly appreciated. Simply contact the developers via email: dev@mapbender.osgeo.org to share your ideas and thoughts and to keep the project vital.

References and weblinks

LaTeX stuff

This is old stuff. We left it here to show people how easy and semantic LaTeX is. The actual LaTeX-package of the OSGEO article can be found and downloaded here: http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Newsletter. 


 \documentclass[a4paper]{article}
 
 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
 % DOCUMENTPREAMBLE
 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
 \usepackage[english]{babel}
 \usepackage{hyperref}
 
 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
 % EOF
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 \begin{document}
 \title{A short introduction to Mapbender}
 \author{
   Astrid Emde\footnote{
     WhereGroup GmbH \& Co.KG, Bonn, Germany (\href{mailto:astrid.emde@wheregroup.com}{astrid.emde@wheregroup.com})
     }\ \ \& 
   Marc Jansen\footnote{
     terrestris GbR, Bonn, Germany (\href{mailto:jansen@terrestris.de}{jansen@terrestris.de})}
   }
 \date{\today}
 
 \maketitle
 
 \tableofcontents
 
 \begin{abstract}
 Mapbender is a webbased software for geodata management of OGC OWS (Open Geospatial Consortium Open Web Services) architectures. Mapbender provides web technology for managing spatial data services implemented in PHP, JavaScript and XML. It furthermore provides a data model and interfaces for displaying, navigating and querying OGC compliant map services. Additionally authentication and authorization services, OWS proxy functionality, management interfaces for user, group and service administration in WebGIS projects are included.
 \end{abstract}
   
 
 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
 % REAL CONTENT
 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
 \section{Introduction}
 
 The following article will shortly present the software "Mapbender". After a short description of the software (see section   \ref{chap:MBwhat}) the history of the project will be presented (section \ref{chap:MBhistory}). Afterwards two parts of main functionality -- management of geodata (section \ref{chap:MBmanage}) and visualisation of geodata (section \ref{chap:MBvisualisation}) -- are presented. This paper then explores some possible future implementations (section \ref{chap:MBfuture}). Section \ref{chap:MBweblinks} will give guidance to examples and further information in the internet.  
 
 \section{What is Mapbender?}\label{chap:MBwhat}
 
 The Mapbender Client Suite is a framework for managing spatial data service. It does \emph{not} contain any maps or map server software itself but it can display any existing interoperable services.
 
 In Mapbender, maps are stacked on top of each other and they can then be distributed throughout the world via internet. Mapbender is the tip of the iceberg, a meta layer of software providing access to the Open Source Geospatial SDI (Spatial Data Infrastructure) stack (see \url{http://www.osgeo.org/mapbender}, accessed on 2007-03-05).
 
 The software provides interfaces for displaying, navigating and querying OGC OWS services, e.g. WMS (Web Map Service), WFS (Web Feature Service), WFS-T (transactional WFS), WMC (Web Map Context). The Mapbender framework additionally provides interfaces for user and group administration and management functionality for accessing maps rendered and data served by OGC Open Web Services. The Mapbender database model has been designed to implement multi-client capabilities with respect to users, groups, interfaces and services. The following three basic components make up Mapbender:
 
 \begin{enumerate}
   \item Users and Groups
   \item User Interfaces (graphic user interface)
   \item Map Services (OGC Open Web Services)
 \end{enumerate}
  
 Currently the focus of Development has shifted to WFS-T functionality, catalog and gazetteer services.
 
 \section{Short history of Mapbender}\label{chap:MBhistory}
 
 In July 2001 the german company CCGIS created the first php-based Web Map Interface: This product eventually became the basement of the current Mapbender. In November of that year the first version is published, already following the OGC standards.
 
 In 2002 an installation of the suit serving about 400 users is succesfully established. The following year 2003 marks an important change in the history of the project:
 
 \begin{itemize}
   \item The suite was completely redisigned to give users the ability to virtually change every aspect of the software in an easy way.
   \item This meant that licensing of the product was changed to a free GNU GPL License.
   \item Users, developers and licensees of the suite were being asked on their opinions on the issue of this change in philosophy.
   \item The new name of the product was announced: "Mapbender".
 \end{itemize} 
 
 In October 2003 at least 500 downloads of the framework could be counted. Users seemed to accept the philosophy of the product. On year later, in 2004, the software is being used in five official geodata-infrastructures of North Rhine-Westphalia. From June to August of that year the software was downloaded about 450 times. In April of 2005 the first user conference took Place in Bonn, Germany. 
 
 In 2006 Mapbender became one of the eight starting projects of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo). Together with GDAL\,/\,OGR, MapServer, MapGuide Open Source, MapBuilder, Geotools, GRASS und OSSIM, Mapbender is now core member of the Free and Open Source Software Projects of the OSGeo Foundation.
 
 The current stable version of the software is 2.4, which was released on 2006-07-31. The newest version is 2.4.1\,rc, which is a non-stable release candidate.
 
 \section{Functionality}
 
 Mapbender provides much functionality to manage and display geodata. Nearly all possible features of the suite can be tested online by everyone in this demo-application: \url{http://www.mapbender.org/index.php/Main_Page}.
   
 \subsection{Manage geodata}\label{chap:MBmanage}
 
 With Mapbender it is easy to manage geodata, both your own data and data from somewhere else in the world. References to geodata sources can be created, read, updated and deleted.
 
 The software provides an interface for integration of Webservices as WMS, WFS or WFT-T. It is possible to see capabilities of geo services and to react accordingly. Therefore your installation of mapbender might become your main database of available GI-Services in the internet. 
 
 Only few steps must be taken to publish your own data (with the help of other tools, e.\,g. MapServer) together with remote data in the web.
 
 \subsection{Visualize, navigate and query geodata}\label{chap:MBvisualisation}
 
 Not only can you manage your data, Mapbender provides many functions to help you visualize your data, navigate your data and query it. Most of the features one knows form desktop GIS applications (e.\,g. "pan visible map", "move visible extent", "set mapscale", "zoom in and out", "export to PDF" and others) are integreated by default.
 
 Additionaly, with Mapbender the users are enabled to search within a WFS. User simply can digitize new geoobject of all types and the properties of your data can be stored and retrieved using Web Map Context (WMC). Handling Metadata is easy as well as the administration of users and usergroups with different rights. 
 
 A full alphabetical list of implemented GIS functionality (technically organized in modules) can be found online at \url{http://www.mapbender.org/index.php/Category:Modules}.
 
 \section{Future Implementations}\label{chap:MBfuture}
 
 Mapbender is a dynamic project, which is constantly improving by input of the community. For future releases some changes and additional functionality are likely to be introduced. The following list gives some vague overview:
 
 \begin{itemize}
   \item option for enhanced logging of user activity,
   \item easier configuration of printing module,
   \item temporary geographic objects in printout,
   \item catalog services interface extension,
   \item create point GML (Geography Markup Language) with a mouse click,
   \item enhance tree folder editing,
   \item routing online geometry,
   \item multilevel Gazetteer,
   \item integrated SLD (Styled Layer Descriptor) Editor,
   \item import of Shapefiles.
 \end{itemize}
 
 As mentioned above, any input by users is highly appreciated. Simply contact the developers via email: \href{mailto:dev@mapbender.osgeo.org}{dev@mapbender.osgeo.org} to share your ideas and thoughts.
 
 \section{References and weblinks}\label{chap:MBweblinks}
 
 \begin{itemize}
   \item Homepage of the Mapbender project: \url{http://www.mapbender.org/}
   \item Project Wiki (primary source of information used in this article): \url{http://www.mapbender.org/index.php/Main_Page}
   \item Documentation, first steps and general help: \url{http://www.mapbender.org/index.php/User_Documentation}
   \item Project page located at the Open Source Geospatial Foundation: \url{http://www.osgeo.org/mapbender}
   \item Screenshots, links \& examples of various Mapbender installations: \url{http://www.mapbender.org/index.php/Mapbender_Gallery}
   \item Online demo: \url{http://www.mapbender.org/}
   \item Contact and feedback: \url{http://www.mapbender.org/index.php/Contact_us}
   \item Mailinglists and Internet Relay Chat (IRC) \url{http://www.mapbender.org/index.php/Mapbender_Mailing_Lists} 
 \end{itemize}
 
 
 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
 % EOF
 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
 \end{document}
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