GeoServer in da cloud!

GeoSolutions is pleased to announce that GeoServer is now available on the Standing Cloud infrastructure.

Standing Cloud provides simple, powerful, services that make it fast and easy to run open source applications in the cloud allowingusers to focus on putting applications at work in the cloud rather than worrying about the servers that run them.  Standing Cloud makes it point-and-click easy to deploy and manage applications on your cloud of choice since it  provides instant access to host applications on many cloud providers. Focus on portability ensures no providers lock-in which means that moving applications to a different cloud provider with a single click, at any time, for any reason, is feasible.

Between available cloud partners, we have:

• Amazon Web Services
• GoGrid
• Linode
• Slicehost
• Rackspace Cloud

GeoSolutions has joined the Partner Program of Standing Cloud and it is now listed as Solution Partner for GeoServer. We have worked with the Standing Cloud team to integrate GeoServer 2.0.2 in their application network, so that now people can install and deploy a GeoServer instance in less than 15 minutes with no system administration skills!

Just look at the screenshots below, in 10 minutes with a few clicks I have gone from nothing to having GeoServer running:

 

So log in and have fun with GeoServer in da cloud!

The GeoSolutions team

Developer's corner: adding two global equal area projections to GeoTools/GeoServer

Recently we had the pleasure to implement two new map projections for GeoTools/Geoserver: the Eckert IV projection, and the Mollweide projection.

Both projections happen to be equal area projections.
These projections are commonly used in atlases to represent the whole world, as they don't alter the relative proportions of countries and continents.

This is actually an important feature missing from the common Google/Bing/Yahoo maps. They are all using a close relative of the Mercator projection, which greatly exaggerates the size of all countries at high latitude (for example, Greenland and Antarctica look a lot bigger than they actually are).

Compare that with Eckert IV, obtained calling GeoServer with the map reflector:
http://localhost:8080/geoserver/wms/reflect?layers=countries&srs=EPSG:54012


And here is Mollweide, obtained calling http://localhost:8080/geoserver/wms/reflect?layers=countries&srs=EPSG:54009

One final observation: unfortunately neither Ecker IV nor Molleweide have an official entry in the EPSG database.
In order to use them in GeoServer you'll have to edit your $GEOSERVER_DATA_DIR/user_projections/epgs.properties file and add the following two entries (mind, each definition has to be added as a single line, here we split them among multiple lines for readability sake):

54009=PROJCS["World_Mollweide",\
GEOGCS["WGS_1984",DATUM["WGS_1984",SPHEROID["WGS_1984",6378137.0,298.257223563]],
PRIMEM["Greenwich",0.0],UNIT["Degree",0.0174532925199433]],PROJECTION["Mollweide"],
PARAMETER["Central_Meridian",0.0],UNIT["Meter",1.0]]
54012=PROJCS["World_Eckert_IV",
GEOGCS["WGS_1984",DATUM["WGS_1984",SPHEROID["WGS_1984",6378137.0,298.257223563]],
PRIMEM["Greenwich",0.0],UNIT["Degree",0.0174532925199433]],PROJECTION["Eckert_IV"],
PARAMETER["Central_Meridian",0.0],UNIT["Meter",1.0]]

After that you can take your favorite world wide map and use the WMS reflector to get a quick map using the above projections.

These projections will be available in GeoServer 2.1 and GeoTools 2.7.
Interested in more map projections and datum shift improvements? Drop us a line!

The GeoSolutions team