[Live-demo] GGL2 application for OSGeo Live

Cameron Shorter cameron.shorter at gmail.com
Wed Jan 4 13:36:44 PST 2012


Víctor,
We release OSGeo-Live twice a year. Our major release is at the annual 
FOSS4G event ~ Sept/Oct, with a minor release ~ March.

I look forward to hearing how GGL2 progresses.

On 4/01/2012 11:01 PM, Víctor González wrote:
> Hello again,
>
> Seems like we have to work a little more in order to get our software 
> included in the next OsGeo Live DVD release. It is released every 
> year, right? However, I'll reply your questions inline.
>
> Regards,
> Víctor.
>
> El 3 de enero de 2012 21:00, Cameron Shorter 
> <cameron.shorter at gmail.com <mailto:cameron.shorter at gmail.com>> escribió:
>
>     Hello Víctor,
>
>     Great to hear about your interest in OSGeo-Live. GGL2 does sound
>     like it is a good candidate, although there are a few hurdles I
>     see before it would be a suitable candidate. In particular, I
>     don't see there being enough time to make our 5.5 release which
>     has a feature freeze on 7 January 2012. I have some comments
>     inline, but firstly a few general questions.
>
>
>
>     On 02/01/12 22:34, Víctor González wrote:
>>     Hi,
>>
>>     I'm Víctor González and I'm currently working for the GGL2
>>     project [1]. We would like to include it into the OSGeo Live DVD,
>>     so I have answered all the questions in the wiki [2] further
>>     down. Let me know if there is anything else that we need to do in
>>     order to include it.
>>
>>     Thanks in advance,
>>     Víctor.
>>
>>     [1] http://www.gearscape.org
>>     [2] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Live_GIS_Disc_Apply
>>
>>     ---------------------
>>     / * What is its name? /
>>     GGL2
>>     /* What is the home page URL?/
>>     http://www.gearscape.org
>>     /* Which OSI approved Open Source License is used? /
>>     GPLv3
>>     /* What does the application do and how does it add value to the
>>     GeoSpatial stack of software? /
>>     The application provides a new geoprocessing language with
>>     specific constructions to make geoprocessing creation more easy
>>     and reliable. It can be connected to GIS applications such as
>>     gvSIG in order to get the data and show the results so it
>>     interacts with some of the GeoSpatial stack of software in order
>>     to add new geoprocessing capabilities (fast creation and
>>     execution of custom geo-algorithms).
>
>     This sounds like it has similar capability to that offered by the
>     Web Processing Service (WPS) standard.
>     Do GGL2 make use of the standard? If so, how?
>     If not, why not?
>     I see that this question is not in the wiki page you copied from,
>     so I've just added the following line:
>     "Does the application make use of OGC standards? Which versions of
>     the standards? Client or server? You may wish to add comments
>     about how standards are used."
>
>
> GGL2 is the second version of the Gearscape Geoprocessing Language 
> (GGL). The first version was integrated into the 52º North WPS a few 
> years ago 
> (http://52north.org/about/other-activities/2009-student-innovation-prize). 
> So we think that, firstly, a GGL2 process can be included into a WPS 
> just like we did before, and we plan to integrate the new version of 
> the language again into WPS. Plus, since it is possible to extend GGL2 
> to add new "readers" (they can be seen as data providers), it could be 
> possible to include the result of a WPS execution as a variable in the 
> GGL2 code. However, this is not implemented and our priority is the 
> integration on the server side.
>
> On the other hand, the geometry model we use in GGL2 is the same as in 
> JTS, so we use the Simple Feature Access for SQL standard.
>
>
>     Also, I'm interested to understand the relationship with ETL tools
>     like GeoKettle, or Business Process Execution Languages and tools
>     like Bonitasoft, http://www.bonitasoft.com/ . Does GGL2 provide
>     the same type of functionality as provided by GeoKettle or
>     Bonitasoft?
>
>
> Typically GGL2 scripts will Extract-Transform-Load data, but it is a
> programming language so I guess it provides more flexibility (not sure
> since I'm not user of GeoKettle nor any ETL tool).
>
> GGL2 is a programming language aimed at writing geoprocesses easily.
> I've read Geokettle provides scripting capabilities to transform data
> based on javascript, SQL and regexp. GGL2 provides much more than that
> so I dare say it is more fine grained. For example, with GGL2 it is
> possible to set the Z coordinate of a vector dataset to the value of a
> DEM with very few statements. It is possible also to consume web
> services, etc.
>
> As I said before, our plan is to stabilize the language and then 
> integrate it wherever
> we can: WPS servers again and maybe, why not, Geokettle.
>
> Regarding Business Process Execution Languages. GGL2 is focused on
> data: it provides a data abstraction (it has "geometry" and "raster"
> datatypes) and constructions to process it. I guess it's not the same
> thing.
>
>
>>     /* Which language is it written in? /
>>      Java
>>     /* Which version of the application should be included in the
>>     next OSGeo-Live release? /
>>     GGL2 m3 (milestone 3)
>>     /* What is the size of the user community?/
>>     We had almost 500 downloads over the last two months. However,
>>     the mailing lists has been recreated a few months ago and they
>>     are not really busy yet:
>>     http://ggl2-usuarios.1062791.n5.nabble.com
>>     http://ggl2-users.1062796.n5.nabble.com
>>     /* What is the size of your developer community? /
>>      We are two active developers.
>>     /* Do you have a bug free, stable release? /
>>     Not yet. Bug fixing (http://xp-dev.com/trac/ggl2/report/1) is the
>>     next step in our roadmap and we plan to do so in the next few
>>     months, but the latest release (milestone 3) is not intended for
>>     production scenarios.
>
>     For OSGeo-Live, we are only looking for rock-solid stable
>     applications. We are wanting to demonstrate to new users that
>     there is quality, production ready Open Source Software, and if a
>     user strikes a bug or error then this will reflect badly on all
>     other applications installed on OSGeo-Live.
>
>     It sounds like GGL2 is not ready yet, but will likely be ready in
>     future releases.
>
>
>>     /* Please, discuss the level of testing that your project has
>>     gone through. How long has the project has had mature code. /
>>     The application is based on the Eclipse platform, similiar to the
>>     uDig approach, so we can trust on the platform stability. Apart
>>     of that, the GGL2 code running on top of that platform reuses
>>     some code from the previous GGL version, which was stable.
>>     Moreover, we have over 300 tests checking the code correction and
>>     stability.
>
>     Are the 300 tests periodically run? Maybe during the build
>     process? Or using hudson or similar?
>
> We don't use any continuous integration system but tests are run very
> frequently. We're only two developers and both of us are aware of the
> importance of stability.
>
>
>>     /* Does the application have a user interface that a user can
>>     interact with? /
>>     Yes, the user interface is inherited from the Eclipse platform.
>>     /* Who will act as the project's liaison person? /
>>      I will play that role.
>>     /* Can you please discuss how your application will be installed./
>>     Just like Eclipse, simply unzip the package. If gvSIG is
>>     installed, unzip the plugin into the gvSIG extensions directory
>>     and we're ready to go.
>>     /* Can the application run in 512M of RAM? /
>>     The minimum required memory to run the application is 128M, so
>>     yes, it can. However, it will require more memory for
>>     geoprocessing. Whether 512M is enough or not will depend on the
>>     geoprocess algorithm and data.
>>     /* How much disk space will be required to install the
>>     application and a suitable example application? /
>>     Less than 200M.
>
>     This is quite large and we are getting very short of disk space.
>     Are you including java in this 200M? (You don't need to). gvsig is
>     already installed. Can you reduce disk space by bundling with gvsig?
>
>
> Java is not included in the 200M amount, but since we use the same 
> plugin system than Eclipse, we can remove some optional plugins or 
> features in order to reduce disk space. Moreover, we plan to release a 
> command-line version that will be more lightweight. We will have this 
> issue in mind for our next releases.
>
>
>>     /* If another dataset would be more approriate, please discuss
>>     here/.
>>     Maybe it will be interesting to have some CSV or GPX files to
>>     work with. We can include some simple sample files in our own
>>     package/sample project and it will not exceed the 200M limit.
>
>     Our strong preference is to make use of existing datasets in order
>     to reduce disk space, and maintenance of the data. Are you able to
>     make use of existing datasets?
>
>
> Yes I am. No problem.
>
>>     /* Each OSGeo-Live application requires a Project Overview
>>     available under a CC By and a Quickstart available under a CC
>>     By-SA license. Will you produce this? /
>>      Yes.
>>     /* In past releases, we have included Windows and Mac installers
>>     for some applications. It is likely we won't have space for these
>>     in future releases. However, if there is room, would you be
>>     wishing to include Windows and Mac installers?/
>>     It is not necessary.
>>
>>
>>     _______________________________________________
>>     Live-demo mailing list
>>     Live-demo at lists.osgeo.org  <mailto:Live-demo at lists.osgeo.org>
>>     http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/live-demo
>>     http://live.osgeo.org
>>     http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Live_GIS_Disc
>
>


-- 
Cameron Shorter
Geospatial Solutions Manager
Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254

Think Globally, Fix Locally
Geospatial Solutions enhanced with Open Standards and Open Source
http://www.lisasoft.com

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