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

Time for action – exploring OpenStreetMap


Are you ready to explore some nice maps? We are going to navigate through a great bunch of spatial data, OpenStreetMap.

  1. Open your browser and go to http://www.openstreetmap.org.

  2. The website offers you a small scale map centered on your actual location, as derived from browser information.

  3. Center your map on London, UK and zoom in with the tool shown on the left-hand side. You can see that many more road types and locations are now shown in the map:

  4. Now enter the Piccadilly Circus, London, UK address in the Search textbox on the left and press the Go button. A list of results matching your search is presented on the left side of the map. Pick the first item:

  5. The map is now at a great scale (look at the scalebar on the bottom-left angle) and the symbols are changed to show you greater detailed information about roads and locations. You can find street names, directions for car traffic, buildings' footprint, and icons for points of interest. The general look and feel resembles a printed city map you can pick up at tourist offices.

Note

OpenStreetMap does not require you to register for browsing or exporting the data. Anyway, if you are interested in maps and open source data, you may consider getting involved in the project. OSM is a collaborative project to create a free editable map of the world, currently involving over half a million users all around the world. You may add data or find errors on locations you know well.

What just happened?

You explored several maps representing the same data set in quite different ways. Different symbols and hiding subsets of data are powerful tools to produce clear and nice looking maps. You are now ready to discover a different kind of map.