This year, I am representing the MapFish project and I must say, the feedback from the public is very good! We (the community) have in these german speaking countries, companies that use MapFish and also customers that want MapFish from their local open source integrators!

At the Mapfish booth, the discussions are very positive. After a brief introduction to the MapFish framework, we give some demos to show the potential of MapFish. Then the question how "to install" shows up and here we have 2 options depending on the contact: first there is a detailed step-by step documentation that will be official with the 1.2 release or – for non-tech guys – I show Studio, the user interface to set up a MapFish project (a really successful BETA version!) and the expectations of everyone are matched!

Yesterday night, we had the community meeting where I could meet and have time to exchange with the local chapter.  I also had a nice dinner with Andreas Hocevar from OpenGeo. The synergies around GeoExt are good and I think everyone is really motivated! Keep up the good work guys!

This evening, there was the OSGEO booth party. Good to relax drinking – free -  beer after this busy day. I did also some sightseeing in Karlsruhe. The Castle in the middle of the town is a must!

Tomorrow, I’ll give my second conference on MapFish and be pleased to welcome you on the MapFish booth. Last chance to meet in intergeo!

Emmanuel Belo
Project manager by Camptocamp SA

Cache all what you can

On the data side, generate the tiles and let them serve through Apache. For example, if they are served through mod_wsgi, we generally observe a 10% to 20% performance loss.
For the tile generation, one key point is to generate only the needed tiles. For a vector layer, a feature aware tile generation avoids to fill the disks with transparent tiles I’ll make a blog soon to describe the recent developments made in TileCache which solve this problem.
With optipng or jpegoptim, it is possible to reduce the size of the tiles.
It is also important to configure correctly the expires_header. Typically, in pylons, you can set a cache_max_age parameter.
For large sites, it is also recommended to use a proxy (Squid, Varnish) which will cache the content of the application and will be able to deliver directly this content.

Minify and merge your javascripts

Usually, several javascript libraries are used in one website. The jsbuild tool, for example, allows you to minify and concatenate scripts from JavaScript libraries.
It makes also sense to concatenate the css files and use sprites to deliver images.

Compress content with gzip

In order to reduce the amount of data transferred over the network, it is possible to compress it with gzip. In pylons, you can set that quite easily in the ini file (filter-with = gzip). Apache used the mod_deflate mode to do that.

All these points provide performance improvement and therefore a better user experience. But all these points are not sufficient if the application is not made to be fast. Here some example of bottleneck:
- If you query a database and forget to create the correct indices, the query will be slow and all the applications will be slow. And in general, avoid complex queries in database. In certain circumstances, it makes sense to denormalize the database model in order to reach top performance.
- Large XML contents are difficult to parse with javascript, prefer json/GeoJson format to transfer content.
- If your application has a large number of layers, merge them on the server side and not on the client side.
- The best thing that a browser can do is presenting HTML code. It makes sense to prepare the information on the server side (templating) instead of treating it on the client side.

I propably missed some aspects, so don’t hesitate to provide your tricks.

Cache all what you can

On the data side, generate the tiles and let them serve through Apache. For example, if they are served through mod_wsgi, we generally observe a 10% to 20% performance loss.
For the tile generation, one key point is to generate only the needed tiles. For a vector layer, a feature aware tile generation avoids to fill the disks with transparent tiles I’ll make a blog soon to describe the recent developments made in TileCache which solve this problem.
With optipng or jpegoptim, it is possible to reduce the size of the tiles.
It is also important to configure correctly the expires_header. Typically, in pylons, you can set a cache_max_age parameter.
For large sites, it is also recommended to use a proxy (Squid, Varnish) which will cache the content of the application and will be able to deliver directly this content.

Minify and merge your javascripts

Usually, several javascript libraries are used in one website. The jsbuild tool, for example, allows you to minify and concatenate scripts from JavaScript libraries.
It makes also sense to concatenate the css files and use sprites to deliver images.

Compress content with gzip

In order to reduce the amount of data transferred over the network, it is possible to compress it with gzip. In pylons, you can set that quite easily in the ini file (filter-with = gzip). Apache used the mod_deflate mode to do that.

All these points provide performance improvement and therefore a better user experience. But all these points are not sufficient if the application is not made to be fast. Here some example of bottleneck:
- If you query a database and forget to create the correct indices, the query will be slow and all the applications will be slow. And in general, avoid complex queries in database. In certain circumstances, it makes sense to denormalize the database model in order to reach top performance.
- Large XML contents are difficult to parse with javascript, prefer json/GeoJson format to transfer content.
- If your application has a large number of layers, merge them on the server side and not on the client side.
- The best thing that a browser can do is presenting HTML code. It makes sense to prepare the information on the server side (templating) instead of treating it on the client side.

I propably missed some aspects, so don’t hesitate to provide your tricks.

Lauréat parmi 44 autres projets, Géo+ est une plate-forme Open Source destinée à faire converger les plateformes de Gestion de Contenu, d’Information Géographique et de Business Intelligence.

La multiplication des données à la fois publiques et privées, l’explosion des besoins d’analyse spatiale et décisionnelle nécessite la mise en commun des compétences et des connaissances au travers d’un outil unique. Géo+ a pour vocation d’offrir aux collectivités et aux entreprises une plate-forme d’indexation, de valorisation et de contextualisation de leurs données, contenus et services.

Plate-forme unique dédiée aux géographes, aux webmasters et aux consultants décisionnels, Géo+ permet la mise en commun de données jusqu’alors gérées par de multiples intervenants et doublonnées sur différents outils techniques.

Le développement de Géo+ est prévu sur 18 mois pour un budget d’un million d’€uros et réunit quatre branches technologiques majeures des systèmes logiciels innovants : Core-Techs, porteur du projet, apporte son expertise autour de la Gestion des Contenu, Camptocamp est en charge de la partie Systèmes Géographiques, Altic développe les connecteurs de Business Intelligence et Antidot est responsable de l’analyse des contenus vec l’apport de sa technologie de moteur de recherche.

Les sites des membres du projet :
Altic : www.altic.org
Antidot : www.antidot.net
Camptocamp : www.camptocamp.com
Core-Techs : www.core-techs.fr

L’appel à projet Web 2.0, partie intégrante du volet numérique du plan de relance, a été lancé en juin dernier par Nathalie Kosciusko Morizet pour soutenir les projets collaboratifs de services Web innovants destinés à favoriser à la fois le développement des entreprises du secteur du Web, et le développement de services innovants au bénéfice des entreprises, des citoyens et des pouvoirs publics.

44 projets, dont Géo+, ont été retenus pour des montants d’aide s’échelonnant de 75 000 € à un peu plus de 800 000 €.

Contact presse : Astrid Sicard, presse@core-techs.fr,  +33 1 42 01 05 34

Le plus grand Forum de recrutement de Suisse : du 6 au 14 octobre 2009 à l’EPFL à Lausanne !

Camptocamp est fier d’être présent au Forum EPFL Start-up Day , le 9 octobre 2009 à l’EPFL .

Le but de ce Forum est de servir de plate-forme de rencontre pour les étudiants et les entreprises.

A cette occasion, Camptocamp souhaite rencontrer et recruter des ingénieurs informatiques exceptionnels afin qu’ils deviennent au sein de Camptocamp les meilleurs ingénieurs de demain.

Le programme et toutes les informations pratiques sont disponibles ici .

Venez nombreux nous rencontrer !

–

The biggest recruiting Forum in Switzerland: October 6 to 14, 2009 at the EPFL in Lausanne !

Camptocamp is proud to participate to the EPFL Start-up Day Forum taking place on October 9, 2009 on the EPFL campus in Lausanne.

The goal of the Forum EPFL  is to serve as a meeting platform for students and companies.

During the event, Camptocamp would like to meet and recruit top-notch computer engineers who can become within Camptocamp the best engineers of tomorrow!

The program and additional information are available here .

Come and meet us!

INTERGEO is the world’s largest event and communication platform for geodesy, geoinformation and land management. The trade fair and conference cover all the key trends that crop up along the entire value-added chain – from geo-based information surveys and data processing to integrated applications. An « Open Source Park » will be part of this exhibition.