Book Image

GeoServer Beginner's Guide

Book Image

GeoServer Beginner's Guide

Overview of this book

GeoServer is an open source server-side software written in Java that allows users to share and edit geospatial data. Designed for interoperability, it publishes data from any major spatial data source using open standards. GeoServer allows you to display your spatial information to the world. Implementing the Web Map Service (WMS) standard, GeoServer can create maps in a variety of output formats. OpenLayers, a free mapping library, is integrated into GeoServer, making map generation quick and easy. GeoServer is built on Geotools, an open source Java GIS toolkit.GeoServer Beginner's Guide gives you a kick start to build custom maps using your data without the need for costly commercial software licenses and restrictions. Even if you do not have prior GIS knowledge, you will be able to make interactive maps after reading this book.You will install GeoServer, access your data from a database, style points, lines, polygons, and labels to impress site visitors with real-time maps.Follow along through a step-by-step guide that installs GeoServer in minutes. Explore the web-based administrative interface to connect to backend data stores such as MySQL, PostGIS, MSSQL, and Oracle. Display your data on web-based interactive maps, style lines, points, polygons, and embed images to visualize this data for your web visitors. Walk away from this book with a working application ready for production.After reading the GeoServer Beginner's Guide, you will have beautiful, custom maps on your website built using your geospatial data.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
GeoServer Beginner's Guide
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Exploring GeoWebCache


A prominent member of the tile map caching software family is GeoWebCache (http://geowebcache.org/), a Java open source project. Just as any caching system, it acts as a proxy between the clients and the map server. If you use the standalone version, your map server can be any that is in compliance with WMS standard. Indeed, GeoWebCache uses the WMS syntax to retrieve tiles from the map server. It exposes the tiles in several ways; with the GeoServer integrated version you can use the following:

  • WMS (Web Mapping Service)

  • WMS-C (WMS Tiling Client Recommendation)

  • WMTS (Web Map Tiling Service)

  • TMS (Tile Map Service)

You can use an external instance of GeoWebCache, disabling the one that is included, but there are many advantages in using the internal one. You can use a single interface to administer both GeoServer and GeoWebCache and you don't have to use a custom URL or a special endpoint; all the layers you publish on GeoServer are automatically configured as cached. You...