2013 - Geoinformatics

34
A r t i c l e
By Paul Ramsey and
David Dubovsky
Although modern open source geospatial software is known to have a lot of
advantages over proprietary, closed source systems, often enterprises find
themselves asking from whom and where they will get support. The emergence
of companies offering enterprise class, commercial support, combined with open
source growth outpacing closed, has enterprises everywhere replacing legacy
software with modern web-based solutions. OpenGeo, and their flagship
product, OpenGeo Suite, has become the choice for those looking for a
comprehensive spatial data platform for the web.
Geospatial Software’s Open Future
O p e n G e o S u i t e 3 . 0
The technology TriMet used— the OpenGeo Suite —packages several
open source projects into a modular enterprise spatial IT solution:
TriMet
In 2007, Portland TriMet was facing a technology conundrum:
though they served a technology-savvy metropolitan population,
which was rapidly adopting transit use, their trip-planning system
presented an old fashioned user interface, backed by proprietary
technology which was difficult to customize and expensive
to scale. To drive and support transit ridership they needed a
quick, easy-to-use trip-planning system that both looked modern to
their users and was built with a modern design, anticipating growth
and adaptation.
TriMet utilized the commercial open source OpenGeo Suite when
building their new public facing maps, including those used in the
online schedules and trip planner. Additionally, TriMet has adopted
open source and open data as central tenets of their systems philosophy:
the data behind those web maps is now all open; and the trip
planning algorithms themselves come from an open source algorithm
which TriMet co-funded.
The reasons TriMet went open source are simple: open source provides
the flexibility to adapt systems to new requirements; open
source provides the scalability necessary to support public facing
web sites; and finally, open source provides the velocity of development
to keep up with the leading edge of technology.
• PostGIS, a spatial database extension for the PostgreSQL database
• GeoServer, a geospatial server capable of connecting to a variety
of data back-ends (e.g., Oracle Spatial, Microsoft SQL Server,
Esri ArcSDE) and publish as OGC services (e.g., WMS, WFS,
WCS, WPS)
• GeoWebCache, a robust caching engine to improve the speed
and performance of serving map tiles
• OpenLayers, a JavaScript library for displaying map data in web
browsers
• GeoExt, a JavaScript library for creating rich map applications in
web browsers
The flexibility of the Suite comes from the ability to incrementally
integrate with existing infrastructures, as TriMet integrated the Suite
with their systems:
• First by bringing in GeoServer to render maps from existing data
formats and database.
• Then building a web interface with OpenLayers/GeoExt, to provide
public web applications for trip planning and map viewing.
• And finally moving the data persistence layer to the
PostGIS/PostgreSQL database.
Unlike many technology platforms, the OpenGeo Suite doesn’t
require organizations to completely re-architect their back-office data
management to start building new applications, and that flexibility
has suited TriMet, and many others.
OpenGeo Suite 3.0
OpenGeo recently released version 3.0 of the Suite, building on the
existing web services, web application toolkit and spatial database,
updating the capabilities of the core components and adding new
features:
June 2013