The GeoServer Users mailing list is often replete with stories about how folks are using GeoServer to solve problems and be successful. For more casual watchers of GeoServer who are not on this list, you may not get to hear about these success stories. So, to switch things up on this blog, we thought we’d report on success story from longtime GeoServer community member Roger Bedell. Here, he talks about using GeoServer as a replacement for MSRMAPS.

Another awe-inspiring moment provided by GeoServer. Recently, MSRMAPS (Microsoft Research Maps, originally known as **TerraServer**), a WMS server for digital raster graphics (DRGs) and digital orthophoto quarter quadrangles (DOQQs) was shut down. Nobody really cared about the DOQQs, but this was just about the only DRG WMS server out there. Looking around, I found that the [USGS](http://usgs.gov) has a DRG server: > >

[ http://raster.nationalmap.gov/ArcGIS/services/DRG/TNM_Digital_Raster_Graphics/MapServer/WMSServer?request=GetCapabilities&service=WMS]( http://raster.nationalmap.gov/ArcGIS/services/DRG/TNM_Digital_Raster_Graphics/MapServer/WMSServer?request=GetCapabilities&service=WMS)

> > However it is split into UTM zones and different resolutions. I just wanted 4326 for the entire US, like Terraserver provided. So, I created a GeoServer [Amazon EC2 Micro](http://aws.amazon.com/free/) instance (which is free for a year) using the basic Amazon Linux AMI (AMI ID: ami-e565ba8c), and installed just [Tomcat](http://tomcat.apache.org) and and [GeoServer 2.2 beta 2](http://geoserver.org/display/GEOS/GeoServer+2.2-beta2): ` sudo yum update sudo yum install httpd httpd-devel tomcat7 wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/geoserver/files/GeoServer/2.2-beta2/geoserver-2.2-beta2-war.zip/download unzip geoserver-2.2-beta2-war.zip sudo chown tomcat:tomcat geoserver.war sudo mv geoserver.war /var/lib/tomcat7/webapps/ sudo /sbin/service httpd start sudo /sbin/service tomcat7 start ` I then added a [cascaded WMS store](http://docs.geoserver.org/latest/en/user/data/cascaded/wms.html) and used the GetCapabilities URL above. This automatically added and published all of the layers. Then I put together a [layer group](http://docs.geoserver.org/latest/en/user/webadmin/data/layergroups.html) with all the layers. The only change I made was to check the "Default Style" box, otherwise I would get a WMS error. I set the coordinate system for the layer group to EPSG:4326, and it worked. Thank you GeoServer team!

For those who are interested in using this composite layer, here is the capabilities document to a hosted GeoServer:

[http://ogi.state.ok.us/geoserver/USGSNationalMap/wms?service=WMS&version=1.1.0&request=GetCapabilities](http://ogi.state.ok.us/geoserver/USGSNationalMap/wms?service=WMS&version=1.1.0&request=GetCapabilities)

The layer in question is called DRGComposite. And if you’d like you see a preview of this layer without creating a new store in your GeoServer:

[http://ogi.state.ok.us/geoserver/USGSNationalMap/wms/reflect?layers=DRGComposite&format=openlayers](http://ogi.state.ok.us/geoserver/USGSNationalMap/wms/reflect?layers=DRGComposite&format=openlayers)

Thank you, Roger, for sharing your story!

If you have other GeoServer success stories and would like to share them here, please comment on this post and let the rest of us know!

The GeoServer team is happy to announce the release of GeoServer 2.1.4, now available for download.

For the most part this is a maintainance release consisting of bug fixes, but as usual a few new features and improvements have managed to creep in. The release contains a total of  46 between bug fixes and improvements. Some of the new and noteworthy include:

• various improvements to the SQL server data store extension

• snappier GUI when working with data whose coordinate system cannot be direclty matched to a native EPSG code

• more accurate GetFeatureInfo

• support for geography columns in SQL views against PostGIS

• GetLegendGraphics now takes into account UOM and DPI parameters

• ip based control and blacklisting in the control-flow extension

• before/after custom sql statements when hitting DBSMs (session oriented sql, can be used to switch authentication in the database

And more. Check out the change log for the entire list. A big thank you to all core developers, and a particular mention to users that contributed patches for this release. This includes:

• Lars Lingner for addding the “forceLabel” parameter to GetLegendGraphic

• Rudi Hochmeister for speeding up the JSON output format on large layers

• Robert Coup for making SQL views parameters easier to pass in

• Tony Young for making WCS 1.0 DescribeCoverage support the “all coverages” description mode

• Hajo Kliemeck for making GetFeatureInfo work properly with user defined SLDs, and for improving legend decoration code

• Tim Shaub for making the OpenLayers preview work with Firefox 10+

And of course, thanks to all those who helped out by filing bug reports.

Download 2.1.4, try it out and help us to continue to improve GeoServer by providing feedback on the mailing list and reporting bugs in the issue tracker.

The GeoServer team is happy to announce the second beta release of GeoServer 2.2, now available for download.

The 2.2-beta2 release includes a number of great improvements and bug fixes. Some of the highlights include:

• Support for 8-bit PNG output with transparency resulting in a nice tradeoff of performance and appealing visualization. Special thanks to Andrea for this new feature.

• Continued work for supporting high accuracy datum transformations that now allows for user defined transformations supplied via WKT. Thanks to the Catalan Cartographic Institute for funding the work and to Oscar Fonts and Andrea for doing the development.

• A new** lenient capabilities mode** that allows the GeoServer capabilities documents to remain functioning despite the presence of misconfigured layers. Thanks to David Winslow for this work.

And much more. See the complete changelog of this release for the entire list.

Download and try out 2.2-beta2 today. You can help us get closer to the official 2.2 release by reporting issues in the bug tracker and on the mailing list.

Thanks for supporting GeoServer!

Congratulations to the GeoServer community in Brazil for five years of activity! Since the first training conducted at ENUM III, the Lusophone community has grown to more than 500 mailing list subscribers and 3200 email threads from across several Portuguese-speaking countries.  Most notable among their many achievements, however, is the establishment of GeoServer as the official map server of INDE, the Brazilian national spatial data infrastructure (SDI), in 2008 by then-President Lula. Parabéns!

We’re happy to announce to the beta release of GeoServer 2.2-beta and encourage you to download it, try out the great new features, and let us know if there are any bugs. Since this is the first beta release, we recommend against deploying it in a production environment without first undertaking extensive testing. That said, we’re hoping to move to release candidates soon, so any and all testing will help this process move along faster.

The release of a new major version update is a big deal (the last one was 11 months ago) and, while you may have heard about some of the new features on the developer list, here they are all in one place:

Referencing

• NTv2 and NADCon Support allows for datum transformations with cm level precision (instead of the usual 4m, when all goes well). Both will activate only if the grid files are present in the data dir, so by default the mere presence of the method is harmless, but generally speaking this is very good news for whoever needs to increase reprojection accuracy. Thanks to Andrea Aime and Oscar Fonts.** **

• A new **reprojection console **allows users to make sure the transformations are actually using the grids by picking two coordinate systems and transforming a single point back and forth. Thanks Andrea.

• Better support for un-referenced data with the new EPSG:40400 code that identifies a coordinate system made up of a generic 2D Cartesian plane.

Data access

• **Database-level security **implements the ability to use DBMS session startup and teardown scripts to alter user access the database during a specific request while falling back on connection pooling when the request is complete. Thanks to Astrium GEO-Information Services for sponsoring GeoSolutions to make this improvement.

• Sorting and paging is now available in all WFS versions (in 1.0 and 1.1 as a vendor param) via the sortBy and startIndex/maxFeature parameters. Thanks to Justin Deoliveira and Andrea.

• A new experimental OGR data store provides access to  a rich set of readable formats without needing special bridge libraries.

• The image collection coverage store allows users to serve un-referenced data through WMS using image/pixel space as the coordinate system. Thanks to SFMTA for sponsoring OpenGeo to complete this work.

Security

• A major retrofit of the GeoServer security subsystem adding support for a number of new authentication mechanisms including LDAP, digest and X.509 certificate authentication, and more. These improvements also includes the addition of user groups. This is a continuation of work started by Christian Mueller as a Google Summer of Code project;  thanks to NOAA for sponsoring OpenGeo to help Christian and Justin bring it to completion.

Web Feature Source (WFS)

• Support for WFS 2.0 adds some interesting new capabilities to the WFS protocol such as paging, stored queries, and extended operators. Thanks to IGN France for sponsoring OpenGeo to make this improvement.

Web Map Service (WMS)

• Support for additional dimensions brings time and elevation support to both vector and raster data. And, with support for time, comes support for animation in WMS. Thanks to Andrea on both counts.

• **Rendering transformations **provide a bridge between WPS and WMS and allow for very powerful visualization capabilities for processing through normal WMS. Thanks again, Andrea.

Web Processing Service (WPS)

• New WPS features include support for asynchronous process execution and a variety of new processes.

Virtual Services

• Virtual services allow GeoServer to support the notion of multitenancy, enabling a single GeoServer instance to publish multiple service endpoints. Thanks to NOAA for sponsoring OpenGeo to complete this improvement and a special thanks to Micah Wengren of NOAA for his leadership on the project.

• Workspace local settings allow for specifying service settings such as contact information,  proxy settings, and output format settings on a per workspace basis.

• Styles and layer groups can also now be defined on a per workspace basis.

GeoWebCache

• A GeoWebCache configuration GUI is now available directly from within the GeoServer web admin interface, including: the ability to define new grid sets, specify which layers to cache, seed or truncate the cache, and more. Big thanks to Gabriel and the GeoWebCache team for furthering improving integration between GeoWebCache in GeoServer.

**Wow! **And that isn’t even everything, many other bug fixes and improvements have made it into the 2.2 series as well.

Everyone who uses GeoServer should have at least one or two items in the above list to be excited about. Download GeoServer 2.2-beta, try it out, and please provide feedback and report any issues on the GeoServer mailing list.  As with any beta version, be sure to backup your data directory before upgrading.

FOSS4G North America

Be sure to catch Andrea and Justin’s State of GeoServer and What’s new in GeoServer 2.2 presentations at FOSS4G North America to learn more about the exciting new features in GeoServer 2.1 and GeoServer 2.2. The conference takes place in Washington DC from April 10 through April 12 and on-site registration is available on a first come first serve basis for $350.

Thanks again for using GeoServer!

Download GeoServer 2.2-beta