[postgis-users] Geoportal Server vs Postgres Geoportal

[Brent Wood]

Hi Nicholas,

We use Geonetwork as an online catalogue - if the record describes a spatial dataset, we have links to (for example - depends on what is available) a geotiff, a shapefile to download, a WFS service, a WMS service, a spreadsheet, a report/paper describing the dataset, presentations, etc.

You can create the files any way you like, but Geonetwork is (IMHO) a more powerful, interoperable & standards compliant tool than ESRI's Geoportal. In the areas involving environmental information where I work, I'd suggest Geonetwork is far more the "standard" tool than Geoportal, which is only really useful for ESRI users & spatial datasets - related aspatial content is not so well supported by Geoportal - yet spatial datasets often have related documents it is useful to provide as well.

We also embed such catalogues in web portals, so that projects can be well documented with relavant reports, data, presentations, online maps etc, are all readily available.


One of our catalogues: see data & reports at (fully open source based):
http://www.os2020.org.nz/bay-of-islands-coastal-survey-project/
https://secure.niwa.co.nz/boi_dc/srv/en/main.home

For Geonetwork, see:

http://geonetwork-opensource.org/
http://geonetwork-opensource.org/gallery/gallery.html



Alternatively, some OGC server products support other formats as well as the OGC ones - including shapefiles...

UMN mapserver uses OGR to generate content - so formats supported by OGR are supported, including shapefiles built on the fly & zipped up...  

http://mapserver.org/output/ogr_output.html#ogr-output
in the mapfile you define a shapefile as a supported format:
OUTPUTFORMAT 

  NAME "SHAPEZIP"
  DRIVER "OGR/ESRI Shapefile" 

  FORMATOPTION "STORAGE=memory" 

  FORMATOPTION "FORM=zip" 

  FORMATOPTION "FILENAME=result.zip"
 END

Geoserver also allows layers to be downloaded as zipped up shapefiles rather than OGC Web Services:
https://wiki.state.ma.us/confluence/display/massgis/GeoServer+-+WFS+-+Extract+-+Shapefile+Format
you specify the format as a parameter in the URL:...&outputformat=SHAPE-ZIP


Hope this helps, no shortage of Open Source options to deliver data as shapefiles :-)

(I'm off to sea for a month in a couple of hours - so will not be able to respond to further emails until Feb...)


Cheers,

   Brent Wood




________________________________
 From: Ben Madin <ben at ausvet.com.au>
To: PostGIS Users Discussion <postgis-users at lists.osgeo.org> 
Sent: Tuesday, December 31, 2013 7:37 PM
Subject: Re: [postgis-users] Geoportal Server vs Postgres Geoportal
 

G’day Nicholas,

We typically use a workflow like :

1. create a table with the desired geometry;
2. use pgsql2shp to dump it as a shapefile;
3. run shptree over it to create a .qix index (for mapserver and qgis, maybe not really necessary);
4. zip the files into an archive;
5. move them to a web accessible directory;
6. change the permissions to allow download.

I’d note that we have recently started using ogr2ogr as pgsql2shp has been stopping about 5 records short of our typical full dataset (global first level administrative districts, with half of Zimbabwe missing!) ogr2ogr is a bit more complex, but can also output other file formats, not just shape file. You can also provide a query (not just a table name) but we don’t do it that way.

cheers

Ben






On 2013-12-23, at 08:45 , Nicholas Tapia <tapia.nicholas at gmail.com> wrote:

> If this is the wrong place to ask this question, please point me in the right direction!
> 
> I'm very new to databases and GIS.  I'm researching geoportals and how they offer geometries for download.
> 
> As I understand it, Esri's "open source" Geoportal Server is the standard method of offering data for download (besides offering shape files for download as a file...like the census website).  It is a software layer on top of the database that allows you to select the geometries you want by drawing a polygon.  It also manages metadata and offers some search methods.
> 
> But it doesn't allow me to make awesome sql queries.  So I want to use pgsql2shp to allow people to download the geometries.   Are there any reasons why I shouldn't offer geometry downloads from a postgres database using pgsql2shp?
> 
> Also, are there any examples of what I'm talking about now?  Are there any postgres dbs that allow for direct download of geometries? And don't use esri geoportal server?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> -Nicholas
> 
> _______________________________________________
> postgis-users mailing list
> postgis-users at lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/postgis-users


-- 

Ben Madin

t : +61 8 6102 5535
m : +61 448 887 220
e : ben at ausvet.com.au

AusVet Animal Health Services
Western Australia

AusVet's website:  http://www.ausvet.com.au

This transmission is for the intended addressee only and is confidential information. If you have received this transmission in error, please delete it and notify the sender. The contents of this email are the opinion of the writer only and are not endorsed by AusVet Animal Health Services unless expressly stated otherwise. Although AusVet uses virus scanning software we do not accept liability for viruses or similar in any attachments. Thanks for reading.

_______________________________________________
postgis-users mailing list
postgis-users at lists.osgeo.org
http://lists.osgeo.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/postgis-users
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/postgis-users/attachments/20131231/12639c18/attachment.html>