Learning the Open Source GIS Stack: Web Mapping w/ Geoserver

In this lecture, we'll get our bearings for the course, discussing what we will cover, what we won't cover, and what you will take away from the course. 

Like all of the Learning the FOSS4g Stack courses, this course will work with the same data we used in QGIS Desktop, Postgres, Python, and Enterprise GIS.  We'll also solve some of the same problems as the other courses.  So, in this lecture, we'll review the data we are working with.

Please note, this video shows the installation of an older version of Geoserver.  However, the installation process is the same.  I would encourage you to actually install version 2.14.0.  While there are newer versions of Geoserver, 2.14.0 is the last version that still includes the Windows Installer package.  You can find the link for Geoserver 2.14.0 at: http://geoserver.org/release/2.14.0/

In this lecture, we'll install Geoserver and test all the connections.  From there, we'll be on our way!

If you haven't already taken my other courses in Postgres, this video is going to show you how to install PostgreSQL.  It is the installation video taken from my class Learning the FOSS4g Stake: Enterprise GIS with Postgres/PostGIS.  Having Postgres installed, and the data loaded, will give you the ability to integrate Geoserver with Postgres.

If you haven't already taken my other courses in QGIS desktop, this video is going to show you how to install QGIS.  It is the installation video taken from my class Learning the FOSS4g Stake: QGIS Desktop.  Having QGIS installed, and the data loaded, will give you the ability to integrate Geoserver with other FOSS4g.

There are a few key components for running Geoserver. This lecture will review the basic interface, and how it works.  The next lectures will step you through how to stand up a quick web map, along with all the different data. 

In Geoserver you can have multiple projects, with similar data organized together.  A workspace is the structure of organizing all of your data.  Within that workspace, a store represents the actual data that is stored for your project.  In this lecture we'll set up a workspace and a store, and then load a single layer into it to demonstrate how easy it is to publish data to the web for consumption by web browsers and desktop GIS.

In this lecture we'll add layers from Postgres, shapefiles, and Geopackage.  You'll also get to see these layers through your browser. 

Once layers are loaded, we can apply really cool styling them, making really nice looking cartographic products. 

The Web Map Service (WMS) allows you to render objects from your server to the client browser in the form of a raster image.  We'll explore what the benefits and limitations of WMS is, and also show you how to create a WMS layer.

The Web Feature Service (WFS) is a protocol for serving geographic features across the Web and includes both feature geometry and feature attribute values. We'll discuss the benefits and limitations of WFS, and also show you how to serve WFS data over the Internet.

CQL (Common Query Language) is a query language created by the OGC querying data in Geoserver.  It is super easy to write CQL, but, there are some limitations.  In this section, we'll show how you can query the data on your server using CQL.

Now we are a going to add a few more levels of complexity.  In this lecture, we'll pass a parameter to the server, have the server process the request, and then send the result back to the client.  This is the fundamental way that you can create a responsive Internet map application.  We'll just touch on the mechanics to make things work, but from there you can spend a lifetime looking for ways to fine tune the concept and create really sophisticated applications.

SQL Views allow executing a custom SQL query inside of Geoserver.  The SQL views are super powerful, and thus slightly more complex than CQL.  In this lecture, we'll learn how to issue basic SQL views as well as more flexible parameterized views.