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

Configuring your data


In Chapter 3, Exploring the Administrative Interface, we covered the administration interface. Specific to data configuration, we explored workspaces, data sources, and layers. In this chapter, you will use them to publish new data sets.

You learned how to explore the default data, bundled with GeoServer, with the layer preview function. However, where is this data stored? How can you add your own data and use them to build your maps?

In Chapter 1, GIS Fundamentals, we explored different spatial data formats, learning the differences among vector and raster data. GeoServer can use both, and in many different binary formats. It can access some data formats by default, while others require optional extension and libraries. Go to the Web administration interface, select the Stores item from the Data section and click on the Add new Store link.

GeoServer lists the data formats available by default. For the vector formats, you can use the properties file, shapefile, and PostGIS...