I am finding it somewhat confusing and difficult to understand all the different mapping acronyms and concepts. However I can see that there is a lot of potentially useful free software available in the Open Source world for one-placers. Ideally there would be an integrated suite of systems (or 'stack') that has been put together to make it all work seamlessly and easily for us, without getting into too much technicalities.
If there isn't, and we choose to go the OSGEO way, picking out the most appropriate elements and getting them to work together will be a huge challenge, especially if we want non-technical people to use them.
As someone with some technical ability, my current understanding and choice of OSGEO systems is:
- QGIS - "create, edit, visualise, analyse and publish geospatial information" (on a desktop)
- GeoServer - "a platform for publishing spatial data and interactive mapping applications to the web" (on a website)
- OpenLayers - "a high-performance, feature-packed library for all your mapping needs" (on a website)
In simple terms I think the way these would work together, for any of us who wanted to use them, is:
- we each use QGIS on a desktop to pull together and create whatever maps we want, made up of whatever (raster and vector) layers we want, and incorporating any desired attributes within the vector layers
- we (somehow) transfer these maps and layers into a GeoServer environment, and make them available (using an interface called WMS-T)
- we each have OpenLayers on our own websites and put maps where we want them, with the functionality we want, that are pulled from the MapServer as required - see for example this WMS Time Example
One of the beauties of the standards is that if anyone wanted to use different tools for any part of this they can, and they should be able to integrate them.
See
OSGEO basic information for other OSGEO possibilities. Note that when this post was first published it referred to
MapServer rather than GeoServer (they are similar but GeoServer offers better features for our use).
Note that
OpenGeo Suite is a pre-packaged version of these components, with some extra bits and the possibility of commercial support. Initially we started looking at OpenGeo Suite but decided to install the individual components instead.
