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

Introducing REST


So, what is REST? The acronym stands for REpresentational State Transfer, and defines client-server interaction in terms of state transitions. Each request from the client is a transition to a new state. The response sent by the server represents the application state after the transition.

Does it sound too complicated? From a theory point of view you may find it unconventional, especially if you are used to a client/server with a stateful interaction. REST is stateless, and once you get the general idea you will discover that it is very simple.

Note

Although REST is commonly thought of as a web interface, actually it is much more. The term REST was defined by Roy T. Fielding—one of the most important people behind HTTP protocol design—in his PhD thesis. REST describes the interaction between clients and servers, and does it by abstracting from any protocol. It describes a set of operations that a server has to implement and that a client can use. Of course in implementations...