[OSGeo-Discuss] seeking OS client API to embed maps in desktop app

[Christopher Schmidt]

On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 09:32:21AM +0200, Tim Sutton wrote:
> Hi
> 
> 
> 2009/1/23 Judy and Chris Beaudette <jcbeaude at yahoo.com>:
> > greetings.
> >
> > my company is developing a demo that queries tabular data for environmental
> > facilities based on environmental interests, NAICS codes, etc. and generates
> > reports that have embedded simple maps (google maps) with the facility
> > location and some facility details in a custom marker.  we want to embellish
> > the maps by pulling data from different sources as follows:
> >    - environmental tabular/attribute data in xml fed from Web services
> >    - GeoRSS with location data from the same Web services
> >    - spatial data from other WMS, WFS, WCS services
> >
> > to that end, we're looking for an appropriate open source GIS client
> > application that can do the OGC stuff and that we can pass the attribute and
> > GeoRSS stuff for rendering the environmental data.
> >
> > those are the gotta-haves.  the nice-to-haves are:
> >    - .NET or C/C++ API (preferred) or Java API, so that the maps can be
> > embedded in a desktop application, but barring that:
> >    - a Web API (HTML, python, php, etc.), and barring that:
> >    - a desktop client that can be invoked from our app that can do all of
> > the above
> >
> > after browsing the products pages at osgeo.org, opengeospatial.org,
> > opensourcegis.org and freegis.org, the names that kept coming up were gvSIG,
> > iGeoPortal, and maybe uDIG, with various other possibilities (cartoweb,
> > GeoDango, Chameleon, Mapfish, and of course many others).
> >
> > does anyone have any thoughts or opinions on what would:
> >    - work best to support the functionality required in the demo, while at
> > the same time (and to a lesser degree):
> >    - what is a viable long-term solution (i.e. not likely to go away any
> > time soon)
> >
> > thanks in advance,
> >
> > ~~crb
> >
> 
> 
> QGIS (http://qgis.org) is probably a good fit for your needs - we have
> an API that can be used from Python or C++. It doesnt have everything
> you need (e.g. GeoRSS support isnt there) but its a great solution for
> writing vertical applications with embedded GIS data browsing
> functionality.

GDAL trunk has GeoRSS support; I don't know if you can open arbitrary
GDAL datasources with QGIS yet, but at the very least, it's not
inconceivable to add that support with relatively limited coding effort.  

Regards,
-- 
Christopher Schmidt
Web Developer