Fossgis: geoserver, status and new features - Daniel Koch¶

Tags: fossgis, geo

(One of my summaries of a talk at the 2017 fossgis conference).

See also the geoserver introduction from earlier this morning for a quick summary of what geoserver can do.

This talk is about the recent 2.10/2.11 releases. Geoserver uses a time-based release schedule. So it is not dependent on features, but it simply releases every half year: what is ready gets in, what is not ready is left for the next release. They have three releases/branches:

• Stable: the current release (2.10).

• Maintenance: the previous stable release (2.9).

• Development: currently 2.11-rc1 (it should be released today!).

If you use geoserver, you can use this in your maintentance planning: you know exactly when you have to update.

Some of the most interesting new/improved features are listed below.

• Styling. In 2.10, the style editor was completely re-done. It supports SLD, CSS, YSLD. You can also add custom legends. Very handy when creating your style: you can now get a list of your attributes including min/max values.

  The YSLD (a YAML variant) has been a community module, but in 2.11 it will be integrated officially. It does away with the main SLD complexity: its XML format. One of the advantages of YAML, apart from readability: you can use variables.

• WMS. Geoserver can switch dynamically between PNG and JPEG. It calculates which image format is best for a specific tiles.

• Vectortiles. Official in 2.11. They can be much faster. The client can take over rendering. This also means the geowebcache can be more efficient: you only have to store it once instead of separately per style.

• Security. LDAP groups are supported.

• Backup and restore. Community module. Simple backup and restore of the full geoserver configuration. It even has a REST api.

• Startup time in 2.11 is much quicker due to optimizations.

Photo explanation: just a nice unrelated picture from the recent beautiful ‘on traxs’ model railway exibition (see video )