Book Image

GeoServer Beginner's Guide - Second Edition

By : Stefano Iacovella
Book Image

GeoServer Beginner's Guide - Second Edition

By: Stefano Iacovella

Overview of this book

GeoServer is an opensource server written in Java that allows users to share, process, and edit geospatial data. This book will guide you through the new features and improvements of GeoServer and will help you get started with it. GeoServer Beginner's Guide gives you the impetus 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, and apply style points, lines, polygons, and labels to impress site visitors with real-time maps. Then you follow a step-by-step guide that installs GeoServer in minutes. You will explore the web-based administrative interface to connect to backend data stores such as PostGIS, and Oracle. Going ahead, you can display your data on web-based interactive maps, use style lines, points, polygons, and embed images to visualize this data for your web visitors. You will walk away from this book with a working application ready for production. After reading GeoServer Beginner's Guide, you will be able to build beautiful custom maps on your website using your geospatial data.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface
Index

Understanding the GeoServer release cycle


In this chapter, we have installed GeoServer and are now ready to use it. However, before starting to explore its features and building maps, we need to consider the release cycle. As any successful software, GeoServer is frequently upgraded, new releases add new features and fix bugs.

GeoServer releases on a 6-month cycle, providing a short turnaround time for new features.

Each GeoServer release is supported with bug fixes for a year, with releases made approximately every 2 months. This allows for an overlap between supported releases, allowing organizations a chance to migrate without undue pressure.

To avoid your server using an old and no longer supported the release of GeoServer, you need to upgrade it frequently, and this is the topic of the next paragraph. The following figure shows the periods of its various releases: