Buzz: gvSIG

One of the great things about being a journalist is that people pull you aside and say, “You have to see this!” This time the software in question was gvSIG and person doing the pulling was a former colleague. I’ve already written about gvGIS for an OGC publication. That provides much of the background.

It’s been two years since I wrote that piece and last week, I had a chance to meet with many of the 10 person contingent from Spain who represented the project at FOSS4G. They provided a some interesting updates, numbers and insights.

- The team includes two rather large main contractors and a host of smaller ones. There are also volunteers. That’s about 40 developers, with total staff (including management) at about 70-80.

- The current funding includes E12 million that runs from 2007 until 2013.

- There are 1000 subscribers on the project list, and the project has been downloaded 70,000 times.

- The plan for success included the idea of starting small, proving the result worked and growing the project from there. The guiding principle is “we have to share knowledge” and the group is anxious to show the success of this new model for collaboration.

- The original users, whose regional government required a move to open source software under Linux, had been ArcView users. Thus, gvSIS looks like ArcView. And, like ArcView it has lots of extensions. The ones ticked off by the team rivaled the list available for ArcView 3 in its prime. One of the stronger (and most popular) includes CAD-like editing with a command line (like AutoCAD and MicroStation).

- gvSIG supports all sorts of databases: PostGIS, MySQL, Oracle, ArcSDE and serves as a client to many map servers: WMS, WFS, Gazeteer, ArcIMS, GeoRSS.

- gvSIG is also a development platform that can be customized using Python, and other scripting tools.

- Upcoming extensions include: more advanced/complete network analysis, 3D, animation, enhanced symbology, raster analysis, geostatistics, mobile…

- gvSIG supports multiple languages from a pull-down.

- The 3rd gvSIG Conference is November 14-16 in the Valencia Conference Centre in Spain.

(Tentative) Plans for ArcSDE Support for PostGreSQL

I spent a few minutes with an ESRI staffer involved with the move to support PostGreSQL (an open source database that’s widely used for spatial via Refractions Research’s PostGIS). Here’s the plan which he stressed is tentative. He noted too that its in early development, so alas was not available to demo at FOSS4G.

Timing

PostGres support is expected with ArcGIS 9.3 next year (Q1 or Q2).

Requirements

Support is planned with Enterprise ArcSDE, which means users will need ArcGIS Server Enterprise Basic at a minumum.

Spatial Types

The support will include both the PostGIS spatial type and ESRI’s own implementation of spatial in the database.

Functionality

All the existing ArcSDE funtionality (versioning, transactions, etc.) will be supported. And, there will be SQL access to the geometry (which is based on OGC Simple Features).

Platforms

Windows Server 2000/2003, Red Hat Linux ES/AS both 32 and 64 bit, SUSE, Solaris.

Feedback

ESRI is very interested in feedback and those interested are pointed to the soon-to-exist ESRI product forum for the beta.

FOSS4G Opening/Lightning Talks

The opening session of FOSS4G (OSGeo’s open source for geospatial conference) being held this week in Victoria started with an interesting sight: a large well-packed room, two large video screens, and people looking for seats. Conference chair Paul Ramsey of Refractions Research noted the attendance at 670, about twice that of the last such conference I attended two years ago in Minneapolis. Last year in Lausanne, Switzerland the total was 535. Paul offered up his theme/advice for the remaining three days: make a connection to help grow the community. That’s not so different than ideas suggested at other conferences, but I always find it easier to do at this event.

Autodesk as a platinum sponsor got the first slot and Geoff Zeiss offered what I consider the Autodesk party line about standards, failing infrastructure, aging workforce, convergence, dis-enfranchised field staffers (who use geodata but have no real input in its update/quality)... He also noted Autodesk’s client San Fransiscos’s urban forest project, a MapGuide Open Source implementation. This was the first time I “got” it was a public participation site. Somehow I think that got lost in the initial media sweep. He also noted DM Solutions’ Fusion, a framework that will allow editing from the field, among other things. The announcement of the acquisition of Mentor Software and the plan to turn its coordinate transformation libraries open source as an OSGeo project was a yawn for most. I explain why it’s important at Directions Magazine.

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Ingress to Support OSGEO

Update: Ingress is supporting OSgeo at the Supporting Sponsor level. That is, the $10,000 level. Full info on sponsors here.

—- original post 9/24/07
I guess everyone is here in Victoria (for FOSS4G) so no one saw the release. The exact nature of the support is not detailed, but since I’m here I’ll see what I can find out.