GeoSolutions Enterprise Services: Open Source meets Enterprise

• Are you looking for high-end professional support to help you with the creation of a SDI based on Open Source frameworks?
• Are you thinking about an infrastructure to support the OpenData and are you wondering if a proprietary software is the best choice?
• Are you tired of spending all your budget for licenses without creating the infrastructure you need?
• Would you like to integrate a proprietary SDI with an Open Source software?

GeoSolutions can help you! 

The GeoSolutions  Enterprises Plans offer the possibility for creating an Enterprise SDI based on the best Open Source frameworks as GeoServer, GeoNetwork and MapStore.

Thanks to GeoSolutions it is easy to meet the Open Source world, forget about licenses and decide the budget for the solutions you are looking for!
Our support plans are available in different packages because we care about who has small needs and budget and about who must manage complex infrastructures and needs high specialized support.

Don't get lost, leverage on the support from the developers of the software you are using!

Visit the web site for more information and ask us to contact you, we will discuss about how many users we can support with your computing resources rather than about how many licenses you should buy!

The GeoSolutions team,

GeoSolutions Enterprise Services: Open Source ed Enterprise si incontrano

• Sei alla ricerca di supporto professionale high-end per affiancarti e guidarti nella creazione di una SDI basata su framework Open Source?
• Stai disegnando una infrastruttura per OpenData e ti stai chiedendo se legarti al software proprietario sia la strada migliore?
• Sei stufo di spendere tutto il budget in licenze senza riuscire a creare la infrastruttura di cui avresti bisogno?
• Vorresti integrare una SDI  proprietaria con software Open Source?

GeoSolutions è la soluzione!

I piani di supporto offerti da  GeoSolutions  offrono l’opportunità di creare una SDI di classe Enterprise basata su framework Open Source geospaziali di comprovata affidabilità, fra i quali GeoServer, GeoNetwork e MapStore.

Con GeoSolutions  è semplice avvicinarsi al mondo Open Source dimenticando le licenze e decidendo autonomamente il budget da investire per il prodotto che si sta cercando! I nostri piani di supporto sono disponibili in diversi tagli, perché abbiamo pensato  a chi ha esigenze e budget contenuti ma anche a chi  deve gestire infrastrutture complesse e necessita di un supporto costante altamente specializzato.

Fatti supportare da chi ha creato il software che ti serve!

Visita il nostro sito per saperne di più e chiedici di contattarti, insieme discuteremo di quanti utenti possiamo supportare con le risorse di calcolo a disposizione piuttosto che del numero di licenze che dovresti comprare!

The GeoSolutions team,

BRISEIDE Project, Geoserver, GeoNetwork and GeoBatch for the management of dynamic MetOc data

Dear All,
In this post I wanted to talk about the work we are doing for the BRISEIDE european project.

The ambitious aim of the project, as stated on its website, is the delivery of:

• time-aware extension of MetOc data models developed in the context of previous/ongoing EU INSPIRE related projects (e.g. in the context of GMES, eContentPlus)
• application (e.g. Civil Protection) based on the integration of existing, user operational information
• value added services for spatio-temporal data management, authoring, processing, analysis and interactive visualisation

Within the context of the project, GeoSolutions will work under the leadership of SinerGIS in order to provide near-real time ingestion, cataloging and publishing of meteorological data provided by the stakeholders to be used as inputs for running processes to perform, as an instance, fire propagation models in emergency situations.

The infrastructure we are setting up is depicted in the deployment diagram here below. Basic building blocks are as follow:

• GeoServer for providing WMS, WCS and WFS services with support for the TIME dimension. It is worth to point out that it will also provide WPS capabilities.
• GeoNetwork, for publishing metadata for all data with specific customizations for managing the TIME dimensions in the dataset (we are going to biriefly describe them later on)
• GeoBatch, for performing preprocessing and ingestion in near real time of data and related metadata with minimal human intervention.

For this project we have customized the metadata indexing (thanks Lucene!) in GeoNetwork in order to be able to index meteorological model runs in terms of their run time as well as in term of their forecast times. Generally speaking the data we are dealing with is driven by a meterological model which produces daily a certain number of geophysical parameters with forecast valid for around 5 days, moreover some additional fire risk indexes are produced by processing these results in near real time. As days go by forecasts from different runs of the model are available as indicated in the picture below.

To achieve our gaols we have slightly customized the indexing configuration as well as the user interface in order to be able to make searches on run times and forecast times fast. If you are interested in having a look at one of the ISO metadata XML documents that we are publishing, here you can find an example here.

Here below you can find a diagram depicting the automatic ingestion flow we have created for the BRISEIDE project (actually, one of the few we have created) using the GeoBatch framework (we will soon release version 1.0 on which we are working in our own repository).

This flow makes extensive use of an orchestration Groovy script that implements specific business logic for the use case. Internally it also make use of various other atomic action for performing tasks like, publishing an ImageMosaic in GeoServer or its metadata in GeoNetwork.

Incoming files are composed by a compressed set of .asc (ascii images) files which are:

1. Converted into re-tiled GeoTiff images
2. Embedded overviews are added to each image

The groovy script produces an ImageMosaicCommand which is essentially an xml command which is sent to the ImageMosaicAction which:

1. Check for the layer existence on the target GeoServer
2. If success copy all the files to the target directory
3. Create the Store and the layer to contain the ImageMosaic
4. Configure the layer on the GeoServer using desired parameters
5. Produce an XML file with the ImageMosaic properties

The groovy script read the produced ImageMosaic output, enrich it with some other useful information then pass that object to the FreeMarkerAction which using a template and the passed data model will produce the xml metadata file (as described above).

The GroovyScriptAction ends sending this file to the next action which is the GeoNetworkAction which will send the metadata to the target GeoNetwork server using the desired (specified by configuration) options.

If you have questions about the work described in this post or if you want to know more about our services could help your organization to reach its goals, do not hesitate to contact us.

Regards,
the GeoSolutions Team.

GeoNetwork 2.6.4 con traduzione italiana disponibile!

Salve a tutti,
dopo il ticket di rilascio di una versione di preview della localizzazione italiana per la versione di sviluppo 2.6.5 di GeoNetwork (si veda qui per maggiori informazioni), abbiamo effettuato il backport alla versione 2.6.4 stabile. Da questo indirizzo è possibile scaricarne il war. Questo war installerà GeoNetwork versione 2.6.4 con in più la localizzazione in italiano; la pagina principale porterà automaticamente alla versione italiana.

La migrazione di installazioni esistenti sarà effettuata correttamente solo se la versione di partenza è una di quelle attualmente supportate da GeoNetwork standard, ossia 2.4.3, 2.6.0 o 2.6.1. Per le nuove installazioni i dati in italiano saranno normalmente caricati durante il setup del database di GeoNetwork.

The GeoSolutions team,

Serving Meteo data with GeoServer, GeoBatch and GeoNetwork: the LaMMA use case

Dear All,
in this post I'd like to talk about the work we have done for the LaMMA consortium.

The Problem
The purpose of this project is to build a complete Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) to provide a spatio-temporal raster data processing, publishing, and interactive visualisation facility. This platform is candidate to substitute the current one which was already built leveraging on Open Source software but which was rather static and contained no OGC services.

The data that will be ingested into the system is generated by an existing processing infrastructure which produces a set of different MetOc models. Our goal is to manage the geophysical parameter (or variables) produced by the following models:

• ARW ECM
• 3 Km resolution
• 9 Km resolution
• GFS
• 50 Km resolution

The ingestion is started every day at noon and midnight, hence there are 2 run-times a day for each model at a certain resolution and the produced data contains different forecast times.
- ARW ECM (3 days with interval of 1h)
- GFS (8 days with interval of 6h)
 The data is produced in GriB format (version 1).

Our Solution
Leveraging on the OpenSDI suite and specifically on the following components:

• GeoServer
• GeoNetwork
• GeoBatch

as well as some other well known Open Source project such as (Apache Tomcat, Apache Http server, Postgres) we provided an extensible and standard based platform to automatically ingest and publish data.

The infrastructure we have put together is depicted in the deployment diagram below.

Deploy diagram

This infrastructure has been designed from the beginning with the goal of being scalable in terms of supporting large number of external users since it is based on a GeoServer Master/Slave infrastructure where multiple slaves can be installed for higher throughput. Caching will be tackled in a successive phase.

As you can see we provided three access level for different type of users:

• Admin can locally access to the entire infrastructure and add instances of GeoServer to the cluster to improve performances
• Poweruser can remotely add files to ingestion and administer GeoBatch via Basic Autentication
• User can look at ingested data accessing one of the GeoServer slave machines via Apache httpd proxy server. The load of these accesses is distributed between all available slaves.

As mentioned above, the main building blocks are as follows:

• GeoServer for providing WMS, WCS and WFS services with support for the TIME and Elevation dimensions
• GeoNetwork, for publishing metadata for all data with specific customizations for managing the TIME dimensions in the dataset 
• GeoBatch, to perform preprocessing and ingestion in near real time of data and related metadata with minimal human intervention

Using GeoBatch for ingestion and data preprocessing

In the LaMMA project the GeoBatch framework is used to preprocess and ingest the incoming GriB files as well as to handle data removal based on a sliding temporal window (currently set to 7 days) since it was a design decision to keep around for live serving on the last 7 days of forecasts.

Below you can find a diagram depicting one of the automatic ingestion flow we created for the LaMMA project using the GeoBatch framework.

GeoBatch ingestion flow example

The various building blocks comprising this flow are explained here below:

1. NetCDF2GeotiffAction reads the incoming GRIB file and produces a proper set of Geotiff perfoming on-the- fly tiling, pyramiding and unit conversions.Each GeoTiff represent a 2D slice out of one of the original 4D cubes contained in the source GriB file
2. ImageMosaicAction uses the GeoServer Manager library to create the ImageMosaic store and layer  in the GeoServer Master. The created ImageMosaic contains proper configuration to parse Time and Elevation dimensions' values from the GeoTiff in order to create 4D layers in GeoServer.
3. XstreamAction takes an XML file and deserializes it to a Java object this is passed to the next action.
   
4. FreeMarkerAction produces a proper xml metadata file for publishing in GeoNetwork, using a pre-cooked template and the passed data model.
5. GeoNetworkAction published the metadata on the target GeoNetwork 
6. ReloadAction forces a reload on all the GeoServer slaves in order to pick up the changes done by the master instance

This type of flow, (with a slight different set up) is used to convert and publish the 3 different incoming models.

The other type of flow is the remove flow which is a composed by the following building blocks:

1. ScriptingAction executes a remove.groovy script which will:
• calculate the oldest time to retain
• select older files to be removes
• search and remove matching metadata from the GeoNetwork
• remove collected layers and stores  from the GeoServer Master catalog
• delete permanently succesfully removed files
2. ReloadAction forces a reload on all the GeoServer Slave.

Using GeoNetwork for metadata management
We have customized the metadata indexing (thanks Lucene!) in GeoNetwork in order to be able to index meteorological model execution in terms of their run time as well as in term of their forecast times.
Generally speaking the data we are dealing with is driven by a meterological model which produces daily a certain number of geophysical parameters with temporal validity that spans for certain number of time instants (forecast times) in the future. In GeoNetwork we are currently creating a new metadata object for each geophysical parameter (e.g. Temperature) of a new model run; this metadata object contains multiple links to WMS requests for each forecast time, leveraging the TIME dimension in GeoServer (see picture below). Moreover the forecast times themselves are indexed so that advanced searches can be done on them.

If you have questions about the work described in this post or if you want to know more about our services could help your organization to reach its goals, do not hesitate to contact us.


The GeoSolutions team,

Developer's Corner: GeoNetwork-Manager, super-simple Java client library for GeoNetwork

Dear All,
we just wanted to spend a few words about a Java library we have just released under the MIT license for talking to the GeoNetwork Open Source Project. We have named this library GeoNetwork-Manager (once again, a lot of brainstorming behind that name, really...).

Basically the goal of this library is to provide a simple yet usable way to interface a Java application with the GeoNetwork that would actually ease the work of the developers hiding away from them the relative complexity of theCSW protocol without introducing a complex communication layer.

Here you have some basic facts about the library:

• minimum set of external dependencies, namely apache-http-common and jdom
• dead-easy API, see examples here
• works with GeoNetwork 2.1 and 2.0.X
• allows to performa basic operations:
• Insert
• Reset Privileges
• Delete

GeoNetwork-Manager is open source and licenced under the MIT License. This library draws its essence from the efforts endured inside GeoSolutions in various projects. Partial funding has been provided by the BRISEIDE project..

Our intent is to keep this library lean and mean, therefore we do not intend to add complex stuff like a de/deserializable entity model into it, since we want to use it as a simple yet powerful communication layer with the GeoNetwork. 

If you have questions or if you just want to talk to us about the using the library in your project, please, subscribe to the mailing list here. In any case, do not hesitate to contact us.

Regards,
the GeoSolutions Team.

GeoNetwork in da cloud!

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

Standing Cloud provides services that make it quick and easy to run open source applications in the cloud allowing users to focus on putting applications rather than worrying about the servers that run them.

Standing Cloud provides point-and-click application deployment and management on your cloud of choice with instant access to hosted applications. Focus on portability ensures no providers lock-in, so moving applications to a different cloud provider is a matter of a single click, at any time, for any reason.

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 and will soon be listed for GeoNetwork as well. We have worked with the Standing Cloud team to integrate GeoNetwork 2.6.3 in their application network, so that now people can install and deploy a GeoNetwork 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 GeoNetwork running.

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

If you have questions about the work described in this post, or if you want to know more about how our services could help your organization reaching its goals, do not hesitate to contact us

The GeoSolutions team

A new year with GeoSolutions Enterprise Services

GeoSolutions is proud to offer four levels of enterprise support services centered on the GeoServer platform to help organizations building enterprise-class Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI), integrating and tuning best-of-breed Open Source geospatial frameworks into what we call the OpenSDI suite.



Thanks to its extensive experience in building and supporting enterprise class geospatial infrastructures, GeoSolutions will provide your organization with an outstanding level of support through the full project lifecycle for a successful and stress-free deployment.

If your organization was refraining from adopting Open Source software in the enterprise due to lack of professional support, we are here to help. Therefore it is now time to invest on features and support rather than on software licenses.

Our Support, Your Success!

More information can be found here. You can contact us here.

The GeoSolutions team

Un nuovo anno con i Servizi di Supporto Enterprise di GeoSolutions

GeoSolutions è orgogliosa di offrire anche per il 2011 quattro piani di servizi enterprise incentrati sulla piattaforma GeoServer per aiutare i propri clienti a costruire una SDI (Spatial Data Infrastructure) di classe enterprise, attraverso l'integrazione e l'armonizzazione dei migliori framework geospaziali offerti dal mondo Open Source, la OpenSDI suite.

GeoSolutions grazie alla sua vasta esperienza nella costruzione e nel supporto di infrastrutture geospaziali di classe enterprise, fornirà alla vostra azienda uno straordinario livello di supporto durante tutto il ciclo di vita del progetto per ottenere con facilità un deployment ben riuscito!

Se la tua organizzazione era restia ad adottare soluzioni Open Source software per via della mancanza di supporto professionale, noi siamo qui per aiutarvi. E' arrivato il momento di investire in supporto e feature piuttosto che in licenze software.

Our support, Your Success!

Maggiori informazioni possono essere reperite qui. Ci potete contattare qui.

The GeoSolutions team

Introducing GeoSolutions Enterprise Services

GeoSolutions is proud to offer four levels of enterprise support services centered on the GeoServer platform to help organizations with building enterprise-class Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI), integrating and tuning best-of-breed Open Source geospatial frameworks, into what we call the OpenSDI suite.



Thanks to its extensive experience in building and supporting enterprise class geospatial infrastructures, GeoSolutions will provide your organization with an outstanding level of support through the full project lifecycle for a successful and stress-free deployment.

If your organization was refraining from adopting Open Source software in the enterprise due to lack of professional support, we are here to help. Start investing on features and support rather than on licenses!


More information can be found here. You can contact us here.