GeoServer 1.7.6 marks the seventh stable release of the 1.7 series.

As the development focus of the GeoServer team moves more towards the eventual release of 2.0, the 1.7 series is winding down.  This release focused mostly on bug squashing and general stability, with improvements implemented for the shapefile output format and Next Generation Oracle datastore.

In addition, a few highly coveted features were added for this release.  The ArcSDE datastore now supports connectivity to non-spatial tables as well as connection to a specified database version.  KML support has also been extended to include output of 3d lines.

The WMS rendering issue discussed in a previous post is also included in this release.

We encourage you to try it out a try and let us know how you like the latest and greatest.

GeoServer is featured in an article in InfoGEO magazine. Written by active community member Fernando Quadro, the article is a brief overview of GeoServer. There may not be anything new here for those who are already familiar with GeoServer, but it’s still great to see GeoServer in print.

Original Article English translation (via Google Translate)

This is a good time to remind everyone that GeoServer has mailing lists in Portuguese, along with Italian and Spanish. Moreover, with the switch to our new documentation system, we now have the ability to have GeoServer documentation in multiple languages. If you are interested in contributing, please let us know.

I’ve ported the printing module, previously available only for GeoServer 2.0, to GeoServer 1.7.x. I’ve created a wiki page for those who want to check it out.

PS: This post marks the end of my time interning with OpenGeo this summer. I’m glad to have had this opportunity to work on GeoServer, and hope that my contributions to GeoServer will be useful to folks!

Are you developing JavaScript applications that interact with GeoServer, but having trouble with the Same Origin Policy? A prototype for a proxy built into GeoServer is coming to help you out with that. This proxy makes it possible to send HTTP requests to an arbitrary domain through GeoServer’s own domain.

More information and instructions are available on the wiki. You’ll need either a Nightly build, or the latest GeoServer beta in order to use this proxy. This proxy is newly in development, so be sure to provide feedback to the GeoServer mailing list with your experiences.

The presentations for FOSS4G 2009 were announced this week. Looking at the presentations and workshops, one thing is obvious: GeoServer will be all over the place this year! Here’s a quick rundown of the currently scheduled events that mention GeoServer, either partially or primarily.

Presentations:

• GeoServer application schema support: complex features for the masses

• Extension to GeoServer to read ESRI Mapcaches

• Comparing apples and oranges: Uncovering the mystery of component selection in WebGIS projects

• SCENZ-Grid, The implementation of a Science Collaboration and Computation Environment

• Mobile Mapping for Field Data Collection

• Building a SDI massively based on OWS

• Web Mapping Performance Shoot-out

• OpenGeo: a ‘dot-org’ to build the Open Geospatial Web

• GeoServer, GeoTools and GeoBatch: supporting operational Meteorology and Oceanography

• Enviro: a WebGIS interface to evaluate and manage the impact of climate change at regional scale

• GeoServer in Production

• GeoServer: Past, Present, and Future

• GISVM, the ultimate tool for teaching FOSS4G

Workshops:

• Introduction to the Open GeoStack: PostGIS, GeoServer, GeoWebCache, and OpenLayers

• Making Maps Fast - Performance tuning and Tile Caching

• Organizing your geospatial data and services using GeoNetwork opensource

• Working with GeoServer

Whether you’re attending for GeoServer, for a greater understanding of all things FOSS4G, or just for the location, it looks like it’s going to be another fabulous conference. Early bird registration ends on August 7th, so if you haven’t registered yet, what are you waiting for?