The GeoServer community is happy to announce the second beta release of GeoServer 2.0, available for download. The developers have been working hard to get the new user interface up to the quality and functionality of the existing interface. This release of 2.0-beta2 brings us 74 issues closer to that goal.

The most noteworthy feature for 2.0-beta2 is the official inclusion of the app-schema extension. Most people probably know app-schema better as complex features, a feature GeoServer has been striving toward for the past three years. The extension gives GeoServer WFS the ability to support complex feature application schemas such as GeoSciML. Much thanks goes out to Ben Caradoc-Davies, Rini Angreani, and the rest of the AuScope* team for seeing this work through and actually making complex feature support a reality in GeoServer.

For those who missed the previous post about it, Ben and the folks from AuScope recently hosted a complex feature workshop in Perth, Australia, in which a number of the GeoServer developers were brought out. Special thanks for AuScope for hosting the event, which was a great success.

A special thanks also goes out to users who have been downloading the 2.0 alpha and beta releases, trying them out and reporting bugs. The more bug reports we get the faster we can get to the official 2.0 release. This should be the final beta release of 2.0 before it moves into release candidate phase, so stay tuned for RC1 coming soon.

• AuScope Ltd is funded under the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS), an Australian Commonwealth Government Programme.

This week the G8 will take place in L’Aquila, Italy, meanwhile a wide number of organizations are working hard to deliver services, data and information for a correct development of the G8 activities.

Thanks to the contribution of the geoSDI research group belonging to the CNR IMAA Research Center and in collaboration with GeoSolutions, all these organizations are using open source technologies (see here) via the geoSDI stack to provide geospatial services (you can find a few screenshots of the portal on the GeoSolutions blog). Please, note that GeoServer is playing a central role in delivering data via OGC W*S services (see ****here**).**

The GeoSolutions team would like to thank the geoSDI team, in particular Dr. Dimitri Dello Buono,  geoSDI project head, Dr. Francesco Izzi, geoSDI technical lead and Dr. Giuseppe La Scaleia, geoSDI  technical coordinator, for their effort in bringing the geoSDI concept into reality.

Looking forward to other challenging scenarios.

The latest stable GeoServer version, 1.7.5, was released with a small but critical bug that slows down rendering when a very small polygon or a line is displayed at a high zoom level (so that the displayed area is a very small fraction of the whole). The slowdown increases as one zooms in, and eventually may lead the Java Virtual Machine to crash. The bug also makes for non optimal rendering of cased roads (the typical highway display).

The issue is actually due to a Sun Java bug, but happily we have a workaround for it. If you find you’re affected by this problem, follow these simple instructions:

• stop GeoServer

• download this patch jar and save it under geoserver/WEB-INF/lib

• restart GeoServer

Voilà, bug gone.

We want to thank Stefan Ziegler for the quick bug report and the other users that reminded us of how important this patch is.

Last week AuScope hosted a GeoServer app-schema meeting in Perth, Western Australia, to bring together developers, information modellers, and users:

https://twiki.auscope.org/twiki/bin/view/Grid/AuScopeSissGeoserverMeeting2009

The meeting was attended by Jody Garnett, GeoServer developers Justin Deoliveira and Gabriel Roldán from OpenGeo, AuScope Spatial Information Services Stack developers, GeoSciML gurus, and AuScope participants including GeoScience Victoria, Geoscience Australia, and Landgate. Discussions included the history of GeoServer app-schema, background on AuScope, user perspectives, and future development priorities.

Future development options that received support included:

• Graphical configuration for app-schema (Wicket UI)

• Support for polymorphism in encoded app-schema XML

• 3D geometry support

• GML 3.2

• WFS 2.0

and more. See the minutes for details:

https://twiki.auscope.org/twiki/bin/view/Grid/AppSchemaMeetingMinutes

The developers stayed on for a code sprint and:

• Implemented vocabulary operations in CQL

• Got GeoServer app-schema working with an ArcSDE backend

• Got GeoServer WMS working with a simple feature WFS backend

• Demonstrated encoding failure of ISO 19107 geometries (3D support)

• Debated polymorphism implementation approaches

• Wrapped Justin in org.geotools.xml.Encoder

  • http://svn.osgeo.org/geotools/trunk/modules/extension/xsd/xsd-core/src/main/java/org/geotools/xml/Encoder.java

  • To be fair, Justin is only the most recent maintainer

  • The source is 3.5 metres long when printed in 6 point DejaVu Sans Mono

  • One method alone is 1.2 metres long

AuScope thanks all the participants, especially Jody who helped organise the meeting, and the international visitors Justin and Gabriel who travelled from North and South America respectively. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.

Remember the good ol’ days, when the only maps you had were pieces of paper?  The past is now!

Hi, I’m Alan, and I’m interning with OpenGeo this summer.  My first order of business has been plugging MapFish’s printing capability into GeoServer as a community module; right now we’re releasing a developer preview. The module exposes an HTTP interface that allows the user to ask the server to compose an attractive map in PDF format.  MapFish also provides a JavaScript library that allows easy printing from a OpenLayers map.

Up for trying it out? You’ll need to download a nightly build of trunk and add a few files to it. I have written up step-by-step instructions for anyone interested. If you have any feedback, please chime in on the GeoServer developers mailing list.

**EDIT: **The print module instructions have been updated for GeoServer .2.0.x.  Please refer to http://docs.geoserver.org/stable/en/user/community/printing/ instead of the old wiki page.