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This weekend I finished reviewing Pragmatic Version Control Using Git by Travis Swicegood. If you are a git user or interested in learning about the latest in version control for your source code, check it out. The book is available in beta now.
Git Book
QgisToMapServer – A Conversion Tool
Friday 19 Sep 2008 by Gary Sherman |
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Filed under: MapServer, Open Source, Quantum GIS, Web Mapping
Filed under: MapServer, Open Source, Quantum GIS, Web Mapping
QgisToMapServer converts a saved QGIS project file to a map file, ready to be served with MapServer. A binary preview version for both Mac and Windows is available now. For Linux/Unix users, the source code is available from the Git repository.
QgisToMapServer is different from the plugin in QGIS. It is a standalone Python application providing the following features:
- Create MapServer map files from saved QGIS project files
- Preview the map file (requires shp2img)
- Customizable data path
For full details see: http://spatialserver.net/qgis2ms
Desktop GIS – the book – Now in Beta
Wednesday 7 May 2008 by Gary Sherman |
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Filed under: GDAL/OGR, GMT, GRASS, Open Source, Platforms, PostGIS, PostgreSQL, Quantum GIS, uDig
Filed under: GDAL/OGR, GMT, GRASS, Open Source, Platforms, PostGIS, PostgreSQL, Quantum GIS, uDig
The book is now available in beta. Excerpts from two of the chapters are available online.
What’s a beta book? Well in this case it’s a lot like software—feature complete and ready for you to give it a spin.
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Global Warming Defeated in Alaska
Well it was a short summer here. Or perhaps we have defeated global warming. This is the view from the deck on Thursday evening:
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Obligatory Eee Pc Post
Everybody who gets an Eee PC has to write about it—it’s required. I don’t really have much to add to the raft of reviews, except for one small point.
I found myself wanting to print something and, based on my last experience, prepared for the ordeal of setting up a printer. I about fell out of the chair when I opened the Printer configuration and found that the Eee had already found the CUPS printer on my network and added it. Hit print and it works. Nice.
Rasters in the Database—Why Bother?
I’ve come to the conclusion that storing rasters in a database is of dubious value, particularly from a data warehouse perspective.
If you manage a collection of rasters that are updated on a frequent basis, storing them in a relational database with ArcSDE quickly becomes a pain. I’m not talking about a dozen or so rasters, but rather tens of thousands. The overhead of the database and middleware just doesn’t seem to be worth it.
A better solution is to use MapServer with a tile index (created using gdaltindex) to serve them to your desktop clients via WMS. Fast, simple, and easy to update and manage.
Wither the command line
Matthew Perry poses the question: Why is the command line a dying art?. Funny how these things go—I was thinking about posting on this same topic just the other day, although I may be repeating myself.
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Beyond the RDBMS
In Beyond the RDBMS Sean references Martin’s post which in turn points us to a paper (gotta love the web in action) promoting “The End of an Architectural Era”. This paper advocates the complete rewrite (well trashing actually) of current RDBMS code in favor of specialized “engines”.
It’s an interesting read with some good points until I got to this:
Our current favorite example of this approach is Ruby-on-Rails. This system is the little language, Ruby, extended with integrated support for database access and manipulation through the “model-view-controller” programming pattern. Ruby-on-Rails compiles into standard JDBC, but hides all the complexity of that interface.
Rails compiles to JDBC? Now I’m questioning the the whole paper…
Desktop GIS – the book
The Pragmatic Programmers have announced the upcoming Desktop GIS title.
The Leopard Limps a Bit
I use my MacBook as my “command center”, connecting to the other machines I need to work on using ssh and Nx. After a bit of tuning, I had this working nicely under Tiger.
Enter Leopard. I upgraded my machine rather than a clean install — I’m in the middle of too many things to start from zero. Being cautious, I waited a few days to see what kind of issues might arise (such as the Blue Screen of Death). For the most part, the upgrade went well, with a few exceptions: Read the rest of this entry »