Scott Davis

Presentations

GIS for Web Developers: Adding Where to Your Application

Based on the book GIS for Web Developers, this talk demonstrates how you can build your own Google Maps in-house using nothing but open source software. The Portland, Oregon Transit Authority recently migrated from a proprietary web mapping solution to the suite of 100% free and open source software discussed in this book. We look at Java-based clients, Java-based servers, and everything in between. We also discuss integrating free, public domain data from sources like the US Census Bureau and the USGS. If you're looking for real-world examples of AJAX in use, you'll find it here. If you're looking for real-world examples of web services in use, you'll find it here.


We start by exploring free datasets out there in the wild. They are stored in a myriad of file formats (some proprietary, some open) and projections. Free tools like GDAL and uDig make it easy to convert them and visualize them. Once the data is normalized, we store it in a PostgreSQL/PostGIS database. Not only does the database centralize the mapping data, it opens up quite a few interesting querying capabilities.

Serving up the data is the final piece of the puzzle. We look at web services based on the OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) standards. We use Tomcat and the GeoServer WAR to expose our data via OGC interfaces. We look at a couple of Ajax-based mapping frameworks (MapBuilder and OpenLayers) that truly bring the power of a Google Maps-like website to your own in-house application.

If you've had no previous mapping experience, this talk breaks the domain down into easy to understand concepts. You'll come out with a better understanding of the challenges and rewards of hosting your own web mapping infrastructure.

Who should attend? Anyone who has ever wondered how that Google Maps stuff works and how they could use something like it in their own Java-based web applications. Open source fans who like seeing public-facing success stories will be especially pleased with the wide range of FOSS tools and libraries discussed.

What should you know before attending? Not a darn thing. This talk is aimed at sharp developers who don't have lick of previous mapping experience.

Ajax development with the Yahoo! UI Library and Grails

Yahoo! is a company that eats its own dog food. They open sourced the Ajax code that drives many of their own websites, including their eponymous homepage, Yahoo! Mail, and Yahoo! News. Come see first hand how the various pieces of the library work together as a seamless whole.

We'll look at some of the everyday useful widgets like the onscreen JavaScript logger (which effectively brings Log4J-style logging to JavaScript) and the calendar components. We'll see how event handling is managed in a cross-brower fashion. We'll look at tabbed interfaces, multi-level menus, and panels and dialog boxes that end up making your website look more like a OS-level desktop than a traditional webpage.

Grails certainly works with all of the major Ajax frameworks, but the easy bootstrapping of Grails combined with the power of YUI library makes for the quickest way to get started with a minimum of hassle. No previous Groovy or Grails experience is required, so come to learn a little about all of these. Any experience JEE developer will feel right at home since Grails uses Spring and Hibernate under the covers.

Ajax development with the Yahoo! UI Library and Grails

Yahoo! is a company that eats its own dog food. They open sourced the Ajax code that drives many of their own websites, including their eponymous homepage, Yahoo! Mail, and Yahoo! News. Come see first hand how the various pieces of the library work together as a seamless whole.

We'll look at some of the everyday useful widgets like the onscreen JavaScript logger (which effectively brings Log4J-style logging to JavaScript) and the calendar components. We'll see how event handling is managed in a cross-brower fashion. We'll look at tabbed interfaces, multi-level menus, and panels and dialog boxes that end up making your website look more like a OS-level desktop than a traditional webpage.
The YUI library is included with the Grails web framework. It certainly works in all of the major frameworks as well, but the easy bootstrapping of Grails combined with the power of YUI library makes for the quickest way to get started with a minimum of hassle. No previous Groovy or Grails experience is required, so come to learn a little about all of these. Any experience JEE developer will feel right at home since Grails uses Spring and Hibernate under the covers.

Workshop #3: GIS for Web Developers

Based on the book GIS for Web Developers, this talk demonstrates how you can build your own Google Maps in-house using nothing but open source software. We also discuss integrating free, public domain data from sources like the US Census Bureau and the USGS. If you're looking for real-world examples of AJAX in use, you'll find it here. If you're looking for real-world examples of web services in use, you'll find it here.

We'll start by exploring free datasets out there in the wild. They are stored in a myriad of file formats (some proprietary, some open) and projections. Free tools like GDAL and QGIS make it easy to convert them and visualize them. Once the data is normalized, we'll store it in a PostgreSQL/PostGIS database. Not only does the database centralize the mapping data, it opens up quite a few interesting querying capabilities.

Serving up the data is the final piece of the puzzle. We'll look at web services based on the OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) standards. We'll use Tomcat and the GeoServer WAR to expose our data via OGC interfaces. We'll look at a couple of Ajax-based mapping frameworks (MapBuilder and OpenLayers) that truly bring the power of a Google Maps-like website to your own in-house application.

If you've had no previous mapping experience, this talk breaks the domain down into easy to understand concepts. You'll come out with a better understanding of the challenges and rewards of hosting your own web mapping infrastructure.