Le catalogue 2010 des formations Geospatial de Camptocamp est désormais disponible en ligne . L’ensemble des sessions est axé sur la mise en œuvre et le développement de solutions Geospatial Open Source.

Les thématiques de nos formations portent sur l’ensemble du domaine Geospatial :

• les données : traitement, catalogage ;
• les applications serveurs : MapServer, GeoServer, PostGIS ;
• les applications clientes : OpenLayers, uDIG ;
• les frameworks : Pylons, Symfony, MapFish ;
• les standards : WMS, WFS.

Parmi les principales nouveautés, nous proposons des packages de formation thématique "tout compris" qui donnent lieu à une réduction sur le prix total :

• WebSIG : PostGIS + MapServer + OpenLayers ;
• MapFish : MapFish serveur + MapFish client ;
• …

Nous proposons toujours de nombreuses sessions de perfectionnement ou de développement des composants eux-mêmes, sur des technologies déjà présentes l’année passée (GeoNetwork, PostGIS, MapServer …) et maîtrisées par notre équipe.

Ces différentes sessions privilégient avant tout le côté « mise en pratique » concrète des solutions, technologies et standards, via des méthodes pédagogiques actives.

Camptocamp organise des sessions "inter-entreprises" (se référer aux dates disponibles sur le catalogue) mais également de nombreuses sessions "intra-entreprise" permettant des formations "à la carte".

Les sessions du 1er trimestre auront lieu :

• du 23 au 25 février 2010 à Paris sur GDAL-OGR ;
• du 23 au 25 mars 2010 à Paris sur PostGIS ;
• du 1er au 3 mars 2010 (MapFish client) et du 4 au 5 mars 2010 (MapFish-server) sur Chambéry.

L’équipe formation de Camptocamp reste à votre entière disposition pour tout renseignement complémentaire.

Pour nous contacter : formation@camptocamp.com

Some others were almost ready to go or at least initiated by Camptocamp in the sandboxes, and completed by other folks :
- snapping while editing vector features,
- support for drawing text on vector layers.

For the complete set of new features or bug fixes, please see the release notes .

Though it’s not complete, it can be already used, in my opinion.

Should it go to trunk ? Should it be available as an add-in ? Here are good questions.

The code is currently available in an OpenLayers sandbox . You can also have a look at the working demo .

More specifically we are currently developping a new OpenLayers format for CSW (the OGC’s "Cataloging Service for the Web" standard). This format will allow writing CSW GetRecords requests, for searching cataloging systems supporting the CSW standard (GeoNetwork does), and reading responses sent by those systems. We’re about to open an OpenLayers sandbox for this development, and we’re targeting Release 2.9 of OpenLayers.

We also envision adding a new data type to GeoExt so that CSW records read using the CSW OpenLayers format can easily be added to Ext components, such as grids, combos, dataviews, etc. Here we’re targeting Release 0.6 or 0.7 of GeoExt (the first GeoExt release, GeoExt 0.5, is around the corner at time if this writing).

Stay tuned.

Paul successfuly managed to obtain sponsorship and to create the impulsion to unite more than 20 developpers essentially from the MapServer , PostGIS and GDAL communities, but also TinyOWS , libLAS and OpenLayers (a couple of developpers from closed-source MrSid were also present).

A big thanks to him and to Tom Kralidis for looking after the logistics of the events, and to the sponsors for financially participating to allow this to happen.

At first sounding North-American only, the event finally took an international accent with the presence of some european developers, Camptocamp having sent Thomas Bonfort and Olivier Courtin to take part in the sprint.

The event was "back to the roots" for the MapServer tribe, probably more resemblant to the Mapserver User Meetings, these having been superceeded in 2006 by the FOSS4G conferences where highly technical meetings between core developers are greatly reduced.

For the PostGIS tribe, this was trully a new thing, the major actual contributors having beforehand never met physically !

One of the major advantages of this kind of event is to allow a very rapid pace of development for each project, ensured by the physical (or IRC for some) presence of the major contributors who can straight away provide their expertise and visions, take decisions, and be sollicited on specific questions.

There was a strong interaction between members of each project, but also between members of different projects, learning on the way how to make their code best interact
with one another.

The second advantage of these meetings is that they help build up and keep a team dynamic, which is somewhat harder to obtain solely through online discussion and exchanges.

And the building of a dynamic for 20 people spanning a 4 day period was clearly addressed, beginning right at the first evening the day before the sprint at the local bar, a beer in one hand, a burger in the other, with geek Tshirts being the rallying apparel.

Day #1 was mainly passed on discussion and planification of the objectives and actions to take in the following days, as well the individual roadmaps for each project. This lively, noisy, and rich in propositions first day finished on a virile and sportive event, namely
a Hockey game between a Canadian and American team. For us europeans not used to icerings, the show was permanent, passing from intense game periods, to manly fights between players, to entertainment between the game periods (with a musical band, cheerleaders, and superhero contests)

The following days were much more "to the point", alterning intense studious periods where only the keyboards clicking could be heard aside from the AC fan and the cans of pop being opened (the choice of said pops having been longly discussed on the sprint list beforehand, of course !), and animated technical discussions that necessitated or led to the intervention of the concerned gurus.

The daily ending call around 6PM was the sign that our physical needs should take the pace over our intellectual ones (in other words, that it was time for beer and food!).

Nevertheless, these moments weren’t solely fun and games, as many technical and fructuous discussions took place late into the night.

The last day (#4 for the initiated) was somewhat slower, as folks were getting tired and slowly leaving depending on the time of their flight back home.

All in all, it was a real pleasure to meet all these great people, and getting to share some well-spent time together. As you can imagine, the public was essentially masculin, Regina Obe of PostGIS fame being the sole feminine presence on this weekend of the international women’s day!

The theme of the session had been clearly set by Paul beforehand, namely "The Need for Speed", as a beneficial emulation has existed since 2007 between the C and JAVA tribes on the grounds of pure performance.

And you have to know that for the C tribe, being caught up on the grounds of pure performance is in the very least a direct affront, so a proportionate response had to be taken! We do have some margin before we get to throw our gloves on the ground and start a fight like what we saw on the ice ring though!

This post gives the general tone of the event, we’ll elaborate in the next couple of posts on the more technical details of what was accomplished, namely on the performance front, the respect of OGC/ISO standards, and the creation of high quality and high resolution maps.

Thomas Bonfort, Senior Developper (MapServer) & Olivier Courtin, GIS Expert (PotGIS & OGC)