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JGrass in Leap Year PreAlpha

posted by Satri on Monday March 03, @11:55AM   Printer-friendly   Email story  Permalink  Trackback URI  Slashdotthis  Diggthis  Del.icio.us
from the leap-towards-release dept.
moovida writes "Since many asked for it, the JGrass team finally releases a prealpha JGrass package. This is the first touchable result of a long time of heavy development to migrate the old JGrass functionalities into the new udig framework. Also the new website and trackers, based on the Savane engine, are on their first run at the Free Software Center. If this release has been possible, then only throught the great uDig community that accepted us and gave us every needed help. Hat off to Refractions and its developers. Welcome to the new JGrass prealpha, the leap year edition!!" JGrass is "[...] a free, multi platform, open source GIS based on the famous GIS Grass [...]" See also previous stories below.

Related Stories

JGrass 2.0 Released - News from the Java Isle [+]
moovida writes "JGrass represents the joined efforts of the professional and the academic environment to spread out the voice of GRASS in the professional environment as opposed to the research environment. JGrass, the java GIS born out of a cooperation between the Jamaican I.C.E.N.S. of Kingston, the Italian HydroloGIS and the C.U.D.A.M. of Trento is not the short form for "JamaicanGrass" as many of you could think. Instead it stands for "Java Grass" and is a desktop GIS dedicated to hydro-geomorphologic raster analysis. With it's over 40 morphologic related modules it takes into the production environment the last 10 years of research at the hydrology department of the Environmental Engineering Faculty of the University of Trento. JGrass is built on top of the open source GIS GRASS and can exploit its capabilities. The improved user interface and scripting facility allows an application oriented user environment focused on the task to be performed. Not easy to say whether one should love JGrass or not. The best thing to do is to read about on the JGrass homepage , download it from its sourceforge site and enjoy it!"
Industry: JGrass goes UDig [+]
moovida writes "It is official, JGrass goes UDig ! The JGrass team feels that it is time to join forces to continue the constant growth they had in the last years. Lots of things that JGrass misses are supplied greatly in other java gisses. That is the main reason why the JGrass team has taken the decision to join the UDIG team with all the JGrass code that is possible to migrate to their project and join their community. This will mainly add raster analysis support to UDig and also hopefully bring the worlds of GRASS and UDig to know each other a bit better. The two teams had a first offical IRC maraton of which the logs can be found here, the WIKI page of the migration progress is here. The JGrass team will be supported by HydroloGIS and Riccardo Rigon at the CUDAM. Special thanks go to the UDig team for the help they already gave and will give in future. As Pope John XXIII stated and Riccardo Rigon often repeats, search for what will join, not for what will split you up."
uDig 1.1-RC11 Released [+]
Jesse Eichar writes "User-friendly Desktop Internet GIS 1.1-RC11 has just been released. UDIG is an open source spatial data viewer/editor, with special emphasis on the OpenGIS standards for internet GIS, the Web Map Server and Web Feature Server standards. UDIG provides a common Java platform for building spatial applications with open source components. This release includes:
  • improved for maps with many label layers
  • Styling is available for the Grid MapGraphic that allows the grid to be customized on a per-layer basis
  • ArcSDE support fixed
  • Bug fixes for the editing
Download and join the fun: If you would like to be involved in this project please check out our website (udig.refractions.net) and join our mailing list."
Industry: JGrass goes mostly LGPL [+]
AnyGeo reports : "I was just sniffing around the uDig site to see what was new and noticed that a big chuck of the code from the Jgrass team has been released under LGPL license. Recall that uDig is both a GeoSpatial application and a platform through which developers can create new, derived applications. uDig is a core element in an internet aware Geographic Information System. For more details see http://udig.refractions.net and also this uDig FOSS4G page loaded with info"
Industry: Spatial Data Integrator, Open Source Spatial ETL [+]
Camptocamp writes "Camptocamp, one of the European leaders in Open Source Geographical Information Systems (GIS), and Talend, the first provider of Open Source data integration software, released in 2007 Spatial Data Integrator, Powered by Talend.

Spatial Data Integrator is the first Open Source ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) solution specialized in the manipulation of geographical information and supported by an editor.

With the intuitive and easy-to-use graphical environment of Talend’s data integration technology, Talend Open Studio (TOS), Spatial Data Integrator users can select the architecture that fits their needs and also combine geographical data sources with non-geographical data sources.

A solid foundation: Talend Open Studio
TOS offers more than 230 native connectors to solutions that include leading ERPs and CRMs, any commercial and Open Source databases, files of all formats, MOM (Message Oriented Middleware) and Web services.
Besides, TOS can be used in many types of data integration environment, focusing mainly on operational requirements such as data migration, fusion and data warehouse loading.
TOS is an Open Source project for data integration and operates as a code generator allowing data transformation scripts (called « jobs »). The jobs are designed using graphical components. Considering the variety of available components, the code generator optimizes greatly the performances when executing jobs. Data transformation scripts and underlying programs are generated either in Perl or in Java, including SQL for basic database components. TOS provides advanced functionalities allowing to export jobs that can then be executed from within the studio or as standalone scripts (web services). Finally, it allows the integration of industry and/or company specifications within the code.

Spatial Data Integrator or TOS spatial extension
The geospatial module includes a first integration level of the JTS library (Java Topology Suite) and GeoTools (about thirty geospatial components). It offers metadata transformation components as well.
Spatial Data Integrator (SDI) builds in three three sorts of Geo components: input components, output components and transformation components. Input and output components read features from and write feature to datastores, respectively. Transform components read features from their input flows, possibly transform those features, and write features to their output flows (note: the term transform is to be taken loosely here as it represents any sort of operation.)
The Geo family of these components is made of several sub-categories: Calculators, Collectors, Geometric Operators et Manipulators.
SDI input and output components can read from and write to files of different formats. The data sources supported by the first version of SDI are for the following formats: ESRI ShapeFile, MapInfo MIF/MID, PostGIS and GeoRSS.

The components of the Metadata family perform XSLT transformations on metadata XML files, in order to go from one norm to another, or from one profile to another (ex: ISO19115 vers ISO19139).

Spatial Data Integrator's architecture is similar to Talend Open Studio's. It relies on three main modules: Business Designer, Job Designer and Metadata Manager. It is recommended to use these modules from the concept to the process so to have a coherent method. However, it is possible to use their components in any order, and according to needs.

Business Modeler
All business models of a project are grouped in the Business Designer. It is a non technical view of a business workflow need. Generally, a typical business model will include the strategic systems or process steps already up and running in a company as well as new needs. A palette of graphic components is therefore available with TOS. The same way as with shapes and connecting lines, simply « drag and drop » an item from the Repository panel to assign it to the relevant shape in the modeling workspace.

Job Designer
Job Designer includes all development components. It provides a graphic interface describing processes and defining project management. A job design is the runnable layer of a business model. It translates business needs into codes, routines , and programs, in other words it technically implements your data flow.

The advanced mapping component has an intuitive and easy-to-use graphical environment. It also enables to carry through more or less complex mapping operations, according to needs.
Once the job design developed, an up and running dataflow can be put in place in Java or in Perl, and then can be deployed on the right servers. The software will generate automatically technical documentation on the job.

Metadata Manager
Spatial Data Integrator includes a centralized repository enabling easy reuse of data sources descriptions (files, database). Additionally, the quick modifications of various data sources used in different processes can be done with this repository. A group of assistance tools automatically define the properties of a specific data source in this repository as well.

Spatial Data Integrator Application Exemple
Spatial Data Integrator has been used in the project of a French national administration whose needs were the migration of metadata. Camptocamp created an elaborate mapping of a database towards an XML file (ISO19115:2003 norm of metadata). SDI allowed to first define the mapping and the corresponding processes and then to export the developed code in order to integrate it into a specific Java application (independent from SDI since it had been used as code generator).

Spatial Data Integrator Road Map
Spatial Data Integrator road map includes the integration of Udig desktop GIS technology (developed with Eclipse RCP -Java development environment-) in order to provide SDI with a visual interface allowing to display transformations results.
In 2008, SDI should integrate RASTER manipulation components technology with the version 3 of jGRASS (scheduled to be released at the end of the first semester in 2008) as well.
Close links with the GeoNetwork metadata catalog are currently been developed; they will provide GeoNetwork automatism mechanisms for metadata generation.
Camptocamp plans also to increase the number of data formats supported by SDI and to integrate additional components in order to offer added functionalities to data transformation and data processing.

Additional information:

Find more information on Spatial Data Integrator go to:
http://www.spatialdataintegrator.com/

Screen shots, database sets and tutorials are available on the following wiki:
http://www.talendforge.org/wiki/doku.php?id=sdi:Ma inPage

SDI Forum(for technical inquiries):
http://www.talendforge.org/forum/index.php

Camptocamp contacts:

David JONGLEZ, Associated Director, david.jonglez@camptocamp.com"
Industry: FDO, GDAL and GRASS Graduate OSGeo Incubation [+]
The OSGeo announced the graduation of Autodesk's FDO, GDAL and GRASS GIS from their incubation process. From the announcement: "Graduating incubation includes requirements for open community operation, a responsible project governance model, code provenance and license verification and general good project operation. Graduating incubation is the OSGeo seal of approval for a project and gives potential users of the project added confidence in the viability and safety of the project." Related stories included below.
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