[mapserver-users] Java - Mapserver

[James Macgill]

At 14:16 30/08/2002 -0400, Dave McIlhagga wrote:
Hi, first off I should say that as one of the lead developers on GeoTools 
my opinions may be biased ;-)

>I'm not sure that GeoTools can quite replace everything that MapServer has 
>to offer.  For one thing, there is a heavy reliance on client-side java 
>which is not an option for many (if not most?) MapServer users/developers.

What you say is absolutely right for the first version of GeoTools (now 
known as GT1) which used Java1.1 only code and was targeted directly at 
clients.  However, for the last 8 months or so we have started from a clean 
slate and developed a new version of GeoTools (GT2) using Java1.4 which is 
aimed far more at the server side than the old code base.  GT2 follows the 
OGC specs where possible and builds on the excellent Java Topology Suite.

In fact, we have just put up a first implementation of the WMS spec with 
support for the new Styled Layer Descriptors from the OGC.  It's still a 
little slow at the moment but SLD does allow for very good control over the 
appearance of map features.

The WMS currently supports Shapefiles and PostGIS (MIF/MID and GML should 
be easy to add as there are datasource implementations in GT2).  Right now 
we are working on improving performance, checking conformance (it works ok 
with the cubewerx client) and developing a configuration script (something 
like the map files in mapserver but in XML)

If you're interested, I can send you the .war file to play with or provide 
details for obtaining the whole GT2 codebase.

All the best

James

-- 
James Macgill
Center for Computational Geography
Spell Checker (c) Creative Spelling inc (aka my dyslexic brain)
http://www.geotools.org  the open source java mapping toolkit.