[OSGeo-Discuss] Re: FOSS4G Technology review presentations - Web clients

Tue Apr 13 05:39:51 PDT 2010

Arnulf,
The theme of your presentation talking about the different webmapping 
clients does sound like it may be similar to the comparison project I 
was suggesting.

Would you consider opening it up to include geomajas too?

Would you also consider developing the presentation in collaboration 
with the other projects, so that you provide each project with the 
opportunity to contribute?

Re the WMS Shootout:
Yes, it was a lot of hard work. Yes, it did attract a lot of discussion, 
and people questioning the testing methods. But I think even with all 
its flaws, it was an excellent exercise. Even if the two WMS projects 
came out looking pretty similar, I saw that as a good result. Now we 
know that maybe it is not the WMS you need to tune, but possible the 
infrastructure underneath.

I suggest that the Browser Client comparison should not try to emulate 
the WMS Shootout.
People select browser clients for different reasons than WMS servers. 
Stability and features are usually more important than performance, and 
hence the comparison should be designed differently.

I suggest that now you have a core group of projects interested (still 
looking for an Openlayers representative), together you can decide what 
you consider to be the areas you would focus on in a comparison.

Seven (aka Arnulf) wrote:
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> Cameron Shorter wrote:
>   
>> Pieter, good to hear your interest and to hear that geomajas would be
>> covered.
>> Anyone interested to step forward for Openlayers, Mapfish or MabBender?
>>     
>
> Hi,
> we have given the talk "Typification of OpenLayers, Mapbender and
> MapFish" [1] in German (translation pending) at FOSSGIS 2010 a few weeks
> back and received good feedback. It gives an insight to the different
> ways of tackling spatial data services on the Web with a JS library
> (OL), a software package (MB) and a developer framework (MF). We will
> will submit an extended and updated version of the talk for FOSS4G. This
> goes in the same direction as what you propose.
>
> Apart form this I believe that in general it will be hard or even
> impossible to compare packages that come from so different backgrounds
> and with so diverse goals on a similar basis as last year's shootout.
> Even although the WMS protocol based shootout was a damn lot of effort
> up front and really well done it was still up for quite a bit of
> discussion. But I am open to contribute in any way.
>
> Regards,
> Arnulf.
>
> [1]
> http://www.mapbender.org/Eine_Typisierung:_OpenLayers,_Mapbender_und_MapFish
>
>   
>> What should be compared between web clients?
>> Think of the target audience for such a comparison being a software
>> developer trying to decide which webmapping framework to use. What would
>> be the questions they ask?
>>
>> Off the top of my head:
>> * What browsers are supported/tested against for each stable release?
>>
>> * How responsive is the application?
>> ** How large is the javascript which needs to be downloaded to the browser?
>> **
>>
>> * What basemaps are supported
>> ** Google Maps, WMS, WFS, ...
>>
>> * What tools are supported?
>> ** Pan/Zoom/Edit Feature ...
>>
>>
>> Pieter De Graef wrote:
>>     
>>> Cameron,
>>>
>>> if the others are too, I would be interested in such a comparison.
>>> My main question wouls be, exactly what would we be testing?
>>> Performance (how?), functionality, ease-of-use, architecture, ....
>>>
>>> I still have to check my schedule, but I believe I can set aside a
>>> enough time. I will already forward this mail to the Geomajas mailing
>>> list, to check for response there.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Cameron Shorter schreef:
>>>       
>>>> German Carillo has been building a gis web client comparison which
>>>> will make a good basis for a foss4g presentation here:
>>>>
>>>> http://geotux.tuxfamily.org/index.php?option=com_myblog&task=view&id=239&Itemid=59&lang=en
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Does anyone know how to contact German so that we can thank him, and
>>>> invite him to participate in a FOSS4G presentation?
>>>>
>>>> Who else would be available to help out with a browser comparison for
>>>> the various projects?
>>>>
>>>> Cameron Shorter wrote:
>>>>         
>>>>> Abstracts for FOSS4G are due next Thursday 15 April 2010 and I'm
>>>>> hoping that we will see abstracts for:
>>>>>
>>>>> * LiveDVD lightening overview
>>>>> * WMS/WFS/WCS Shootout
>>>>> * Desktop comparison
>>>>> * Browser Client comparison
>>>>> * Database comparison
>>>>>
>>>>> I predict that these presentations will be by far the most popular
>>>>> presentations of the conference. Further, I'm expecting to
>>>>> incorporate results onto the LiveDVD. They will be a lot of effort
>>>>> to prepare, partly because they will need a team of project
>>>>> developers to contribute to it, and consequently, unless we get our
>>>>> act together soon, I suspect that no-one will submit presentations
>>>>> for some of the topics above.
>>>>>
>>>>> So I encourage people to respond to the following targeted email
>>>>> threads, noting your intention to help and be part of one of the
>>>>> presentation teams. (Note, the presentation will be the easy bit,
>>>>> the hard bit will be collating the material for the presentation).
>>>>>
>>>>> A good team for these comparison projects will consist of:
>>>>>
>>>>> * a representative from each project in the comparison. These types
>>>>> of comparisons will be the first place new users will go when
>>>>> researching software, so are well worth participating in.
>>>>> * users who have used more than one of the applications
>>>>> * anyone involved in related comparison reviews, or development of
>>>>> feature tables or similar
>>>>> * coordinator/"get it done" people who can pull it all together
>>>>> * people who can speak well, and efficiently. (You will have lots of
>>>>> material to present is a short time)
>>>>>
>>>>>           
>>     
>
>
> - --
> Arnulf Christl
>
> Exploring Space, Time and Mind
> http://arnulf.us
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-- 
Cameron Shorter
Geospatial Systems Architect
Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254

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