[postgis-users] Geotools, Geoserver and PostGIS integration

[Rob Hranac]

Peter,

> My current thinking is around a system that stores spatial 
> and attribute data in PostgreSQL using PostGIS, having this 
> data accessed via a Geoserver application server, and then 
> using Geotools to render it in a client side browser applet.

I am also interested in similar project (for urban planning), and this
is the reason for the GeoServer project.  My focus remains on getting
GeoServer to v1.0 and improving WFS client support in GeoTools2, but I
will probably work on applications of distributed GIS after I have done
so, so I am very interested in your experiences.

> * Geotools would probably need new supporting code to handle
>   the WFS request/response interaction. True?

Yes, I was thinking about adding this to GeoTools2 sometime later this
month.  It is pretty trivial because of the existing GML parsing code,
so if you would like to add it yourself, feel free.

> * Is the GML code in Geotools2 sufficiently developed to be 
> able to render data that has been sourced from a GML based data
source?

Not yet.  The GML code can now parse GML documents and put them into the
GeoTools2 feature structure, but rendering is still in progress, I
think: James would know better.

> * Although WFS doesn't currently specify support for 
> requesting raster datasets, would support for this in all tiers
difficult to add? This 
> support would obviously be in an out-of-standard way until WFS matured
enough to
> specify an interaction.

The WFS specification doesn't support raster datasets - rather the OGC
has designated that the Web Coverage Server (WCS) specification should
do this.  I am thinking of adding WCS support to GeoServer, but it will
not be for a few months because the WCS specification is at v0.0.7 and
far from complete.  My best guess is that WCS will come out of the
latest OGC testbed in November.  You could always add custom raster
support in the meantime, as you indicate.

> Obviously any new code developed to add the kind of 
> functionality I needed could be contributed back to the 
> projects, if it was considered valuable.

Sounds good to me.  Good luck and let keep me posted on your progress...

Best Regards,
Rob Hranac