[Featureserver] FeatureServer 2.0: Soonish

[Christopher Schmidt]

On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 06:35:32PM +1100, Roald de Wit wrote:
> Hi Christopher and list,
> 
> Could it be that the new features described below are not in SVN trunk
> yet? If so, would it be a good idea to add them? That could help us,
> users play with it and maybe discover bugs and/or provide patches.

Since this is a maojr refactoring, I did not want to change trunk
without making sure it was relatively complete as far as doing the
things the old code did. I still haven't had time for that, so it's
still in a branch:

  http://svn.featureserver.org/branches/refactor/

-- Chris  

> I'm very interested in using the WPS-like functionality within FS.
> 
> Thanks, Roald
> 
> 
> On Wed, 2008-05-21 at 13:48 +0930, Christopher Schmidt wrote:
> > This weekend, at Wherecamp, Myself, jlivni, and brentp took on the task
> > of refactoring a significant chunk of FeatureServer.
> > 
> > The result, which I've been referring to as FeatureServer 2.0, will
> > likely be a significant step forwards, and although I expect it won't be
> > significantly different to operate, there are enough changes that I'd
> > like to call it '2.0', and stop further development of the 1.x line.
> > 
> > Major new feature:
> >  * Improved support for attribute queries: Now supporting comparisons
> >    like greaterthan, lessthan, etc. using django-like URL filters, on
> >    datasources which support them.
> > 
> >  * Support for processing actions on output. Any datasource can now
> >    define a list of 'processes', which will then be applied to the
> >    features after they are loaded from the dataset and before they are
> >    returned to the user.
> > 
> >    http://featureserver.org/refactor/doc/Processes.html has more
> >    information.
> > 
> > As a demo:
> >  http://featureserver.org/refactor/featureserver.cgi/scribble/17.html
> >  Complex Line.
> > 
> >  http://featureserver.org/refactor/featureserver.cgi/scribble_simplify/17.html
> >  Somewhat simplified line. Not visibly so: the default of .1 at this
> >  zoom shows little degredation.
> > 
> >  http://featureserver.org/refactor/featureserver.cgi/scribble_simplify/17.html?process_simplify_tolerance=10
> >  Very simplified line.
> > 
> > 
> > New Properties:
> >  * Feature model and serialization/deserialization is handled by
> >    a seperated chunk of code, currently called vectorformats.
> >    vectorformats is a lightweight OGR-like data converter in Python,
> >    designed for the purpose of things like FeatureServer. (It will also
> >    work well for other Python projects which need to serialize geometry
> >    + attributes.)
> > 
> >  * Refactored web serving to seperate code common to TileCache,
> >    FeatureServer,  WPServer.
> > 
> >  * Updated internal geometry model to current GeoJSON specs
> > 
> > One thing that I'm thinking seriously about doing is changing the
> > 'default' format/service from GeoJSON to HTML (and, correspondingly,
> > improving the HTML to work in more places/support a wider set of
> > depandancies as options). The upshot of this would be:
> >  * The default view is broser-oriented.
> >  * Crawling from services like Google or other web services
> >    would be more likely.
> >  * It's easier to link from HTML to other services than the other way
> >    around.
> > 
> > Downsides:
> >  * Applications which expect a GeoJSON file based on a no-extension,
> >    no-content type request will get screwed.
> > 
> > That downside seems an appropriate step to take at a 2.0, assuming that
> > the default setup can be made to fall back to something else which is
> > sensible if HTML support is not available.
> > 
> > At the moment, the work is in the 'refactor' branch. If there's
> > something about FeatureServer that has been bothering you, but it seemed
> > like an API change, now might be a good time to mention it. My current
> > plan is to continue hacking / playing in refactor for another week or so,
> > mostly writing tests and so on, and then merge it back to trunk, at
> > which point trunk will become '2.0 prep' until we release 2.0.
> > 
> > If this seems likely to interfere with deadlines of yours, please let
> > the list know, and we can look at how to solve the problem.
> > 
> > Regards,
> > --
> > Christopher Schmidt
> > MetaCarta
> > _______________________________________________
> > Featureserver mailing list
> > Featureserver at openlayers.org
> > http://featureserver.org/mailman/listinfo/featureserver
> -- 
> Roald de Wit
> Software Engineer
> roald.dewit at lisasoft.com
> 
> Commercial Support for Open Source GIS Software
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> 

-- 
Christopher Schmidt
MetaCarta