In+ersec+ion for Spatial People

PRESS RELEASE

Publishing Open Data using Open Standards

GeoCat - The Government Geographic Data Publishing Company introduces GeoCat Bridge™ v1.1 

Bennekom, 10 January 2012 - GeoCat Bridge™ is designed to publish geospatial data and metadata on the Internet with a click of a button. GeoCat Bridge is an Esri® ArcGIS® Desktop extension. Publishing is done through Open Standards on a proven Free and Open Software (FOSS) server platform. Numerous government agencies, universities and privately held companies are satisfied users of Bridge version 1.0

Open Data - Open Standards!

Using a high performance server solution with unparalleled support for OGC services, data providers can deliver Open Data through Open Standards. Publishing data through Open Standards is critical to make your work a success. It allows consumers to make optimal use of your data.

Bridge has been optimized to work with the GeoServer map server and the GeoNetwork opensource metadata catalog. This free and open source server platform publishes your data in the most common data formats. Your data can be combined with Open Street Map, Google Maps™, Bing® or other base maps. 

“GeoCat Bridge is the long awaited product that promises to fill the gap between our open - and closed source hybrid geospatial frameworks” according to Thijs van Menen from Rijkswaterstaat (Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment, The Netherlands). “Specific knowledge on how to make services is no longer needed. Finally we can fulfill the needs of our staff by providing them with a tool to make services by themselves in an easy way”

Comply with the INSPIRE Directive

GeoCat Bridge makes it extremely easy to comply with the European INSPIRE directive. You can create INSPIRE View Services with related metadata that complies to INSPIRE or is based upon an even more specific country profile (check availability). 

”The combination of ArcGIS Desktop and publishing data to an open source server platform in accordance with INSPIRE regulations is exactly what our customers need” said Sjaak Dieleman of Nieuwland Geo-Informatie “It is one of the main reasons why we were asked to build the INSPIRE services for all 25 Regional Water Authorities and the Department of Cultural Heritage (RCE) in The Netherlands”

New in Version 1.1 - Exhaustive Symbology and PostGIS Support

With the introduction of Version 1.1 a lot of improvements were implemented that contribute to an even better end-result and user experience. An exhaustive list of complex symbols is supported allowing a one-on-one conversion from Desktop to Web Map. Publishing map legends, ArcGIS 10 support, GeoSticker support and ArcSDE layer support have been added or further improved. 

Another major step is the support for PostGIS. It is now possible to upload data directly into a PostGIS database and configure map services on GeoServer using that data store. This can dramatically boost your map server performance.

“GeoCat Bridge is a key part of our Neftex Earth Model publishing workflow, enabling us to easily replicate the geological symbols used to style our ArcGIS produced content” said Alex Rushfort of Neftex ”Now we can deliver Web Map Services to our international oil industry clients through GeoServer, retaining the familiar appearance of our desktop GIS data products”

You can do it!

No advanced skills required! As a Bridge user you can fully enjoy all of the relevant functionality GeoServer and GeoNetwork have to offer without the need to be a web mapping or metadata expert. Map services and metadata are automatically linked, complexity of map symbology is no longer an issue, preview images are automatically generated and much, much more. 

“We are very excited to offer the GeoCat Bridge plugin to users of the OpenGeo Suite” said Chris Holmes, OpenGeo President ” This will greatly improve workflows for our users of Esri Desktop software, and make it much simpler for everyone to put their maps onto the web"

Pricing & Availability - Try Now for Free

GeoCat Bridge is available worldwide for a retail price of €1200,-  for a single Standard license and €1500,- for the Premium version (Prices Excluding VAT). More details, also regarding other types of licenses and volume discounts, can be found on  http://www.geocat.net/bridge/order-now. 

During the month of January 2012 we offer you a one week FREE trial license to give you the possibility to experience all functionality first hand (http://www.geocat.net/bridge/try-now). In addition to the Bridge software GeoCat offers premium support contracts and services on GeoNetwork and the OpenGeo Suite to get you up and running quickly.

About GeoCat bv

GeoCat bv, The Government Geographic Data Publishing Company, was established in the Netherlands in 2007 and offers cutting-edge, customized software and services that make publishing geospatial data on the Internet easier and more efficient than ever. GeoCat offers consultancy and support for GeoNetwork and has a direct partnership with OpenGeo to deliver OpenGeo Suite Support and Services. GeoCat provides consulting services and products that contribute to the development of National Spatial Data Infrastructures for The Netherlands, Swiss, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Scotland, ESA and many others. GeoCat’s Jeroen Ticheler founded the GeoNetwork opensource metadata catalog project.

Copyright © 2012 GeoCat bv. All rights reserved. GeoCat Bridge is a trademark of GeoCat bv. Esri, ArcGIS Desktop, ArcSDE and GeoSticker are trademark or registered trademarks of Esri in the United States, the European Community, or certain other jurisdictions. Google Maps is a trademark of Google Inc in the United States and/or other countries. Bing is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.

# # #

Press Information:

Harald Pouwel, GeoCat B.V.
Tel.: +31 (0)6 29 06 65 15
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://www.geocat.net

While the presentation was on its first day in Denver, Peter Batty starts by exposing the overall success of the 2011 edition (and the slow Wifi network at the conference Hotel...) as well as the force of the open source community. In his opening ceremony, he has compiled the registration and the FOSS4G 2011 had more than 900 attendees with almost half of the crowd from the USA, around 150 Europeans and Japan as the only Asian country represented.

Secondly, Arnulf Christl presents, by showing OSGeo/FOSS4G geek T-shirt, the diversity of OSGeo around the world. Thirdly, Paul Ramsey, with his unique sense of humour, speaks about the Open source business model in his own language as it can be defines by each corporation and organisation that is working in FOSS4G as long as it keeps code alive. 

Afterward, technical and academic session were exposing what’s hot in terms of geospatial open source software. Presentations on Map tiling and the new trend as managing map tiles in a database such SQLite with MapProxy. At the same time, the Apache module called geocache, renamed MapCache, was presenting its benchmark as well as its integration in the MapServer stack. In the Geonetwork presentation, the newest 2.8 geodata catalog release now separates the client and server product, the interface of metadata editor has been improved and a tool to add shapefile on-the-fly as a layer has been developed. With a strong presence of ESRI a the FOSS4G, the City and County of Denver showed that using OpenLayers in combination with ArcGIS Server is quite effective and how their contribution to the AgsjsAdapter.js to support the ArcGIS tiles version 10 was beneficial.

A discussion on the WFS-Transactional versus the REST/geoJson has been helpful to understand the performance implementation of this OGC standard with GeoServer/MapFish and to raise issue on the gml format as a WFS lack of documentation and fully compliant readers in the market.

With the ongoing INSPIRE project in Europe, a suggestion of using OpenStreetMap as data transfer catalyser was done and seriously discussed. The idea was in fact when local and national government will transfer their data in INSPIRE geospatial infrastructure, they could import their own data into OpenStreetMap infrastructure, then transform and extract the information from OSM to the INSPIRE specifications. GeoScript has been presented in a full packed room and demonstrated as a geoprocessing library in a variety of scripting environment (JavaScript, Python, Scala, and Groovy) based on GeoTools. A real life presentation shows how a the Quebec Public Safety ministry has been using open source software stack (MapServer, Tilecache, PostGIS, GeoExt and OpenLayers) in a web application (G.O.LOC French description: http://geoegl.msp.gouv.qc.ca/accueil/portail_geo/goloc.htm) and by developing web map services to support 9-1-1 emergency call centre.

This open source collaboration project with partners organisation, such as Quebec National Public Health Institute, has been helpful to first responders and emergency manager to actually open the used of geodata in real life-saving situation.

Via the OSGEo-Discuss list I learned about the release of GeoNetwork opensource version 2.6.4: "This is a minor release that adds a number of improvements and fixes a large number of bugs." Follow the link to learn what's new and fixed.

Here's a reminder of what GeoNetwork opensource is, from its official site: "GeoNetwork is a catalog application to manage spatially referenced resources. It provides powerful metadata editing and search functions as well as an embedded interactive web map viewer. It is currently used in numerous Spatial Data Infrastructure initiatives across the world."

You can visit the GeoNetwork gallery to learn more about who's using it. We mentioned GeoNetwork several times in the past.

Here's the Friday geonews in batch mode.

From the open source / open data front:

• A third entry in the series of the Free Shapefiles of Countries of the World, focusing this time on small countries
• Mapperz mentions FacilMap.org Beta, that aims to group together layers of various OpenStreetMap projects
• An entry on OpenPisteMap, for mountain sports
• Via Kurt, here's NOAA's new bathymetry data viewer
• There's a new offline editing plugin for QGIS
• GeoNetwork opensource v2.6.2 released
• Shapely 1.2.8 has been released

From the ESRI front:

• SS summarizes Jack Dangermond's opening talk at the GeoDesign Summit and shares a second entry named Exploring the Esri Approach to GeoDesign
• James praises for Python in ArcGIS

In the miscellaneous category:

• There has been quite a few entries on the Australian flood maps, the best one I found is from VerySpatial
• Here's the Top 10 Spatial Law and Policy Stories of 2010
• Via APB, here's DigitalGlobe's Top Ten Imagery Related Events of the Decade
• APB mentions that a Japanese Company Achieves 3 cm Accuracy for GPS
• GLONASS-enabled phones are coming in March
• Here's Cédric's seven 2011 geo predictions
• Kurt mentions the Earth Observer iOS app
• SS mentions Satellite Monitoring Employed to Prevent Civil War in Sudan, supported by actor George Clooney
• Slashdot ran a story named 'French Use Space Tech To Find Parking Spots'

In the maps category:

• A map of North American English Dialects
• An entry on Michael Zeiler's Solar Eclipse Map Website

Two weeks after the 2.6.0 version of this geographic metadata catalog system, here comes GeoNetwork Open Source v2.6.1.

In addition to several bug fixes, other changes include:

•  Added support for OpenLayers Map config options in map viewer
• Service to retrieve the metadata owned by a user
• Use redirect for login and logout services to show in browser address bar the url of main page, after login/logout

We mentioned it in the past and it just got updated, GeoNetwork Open Source v2.6.0 has been released. For those who don't remember, from the official site: "GeoNetwork is a web based Geographic Metadata Catalog System developed by FAO-UN, WFP and UNEP. The system implements the ISO19115/19139 Geographic Metadata, Z39.50, CSW 2.0 and OGC-WMS standards among others. It runs on the server and desktop."

So, what's new in this release? From the announcement, "This release includes the following new or improved functionality:

• Performance improvements on search and indexing
• INSPIRE Search panel and metadata view
• New embedded Web Map Viewer based on OpenLayers
• Multilingual metadata display and editing support for the ISO19115/19119/19110 metadata standards (encoding based on ISO19139)
• Keywords and Coordinate Reference System selection panels
• Advanced data and metadata export
• Metadata relations management (Parent/child metadata, related service metadata, related feature catalogues)
• Advanced schema and schematron validation of metadata with reporting improvements
• Visual warnings in the metadata editor
• and many more..."