2010 Fall ILGISA Workshop

1. Saving Money Using
Open Source Software
Bryan Luman
bryanluman@gmail.com

2. What is Open Source
Software?
http://notinventedhe.re/on/2010-10-13

3. Wikipedia Says...
Open-source software (OSS) is computer
software that is available in source code form
for which the source code and certain other
rights normally reserved for copyright holders
are provided under a software license that
permits users to study, change, and improve
the software.

4. What does that
mean to me?
• FREE!
• You can make changes to the software
• You can learn from experienced coders
• Oh, yeah... FREE!

5. Types of Licenses
GPL MPL
Artistic license
LGPL MIT
Apache Creative Commons
Public Domain BSD
CDDL Eclipse

6. http://www.opensource.org

7. (so don’t sue me)
• Check with your lawyer if you are unsure
• JUST AS YOU SHOULD WITH ANY
DEAL!
• Example: RFP’s, Microsoft CAL’s, developer
licenses.

8. End of Scary Legal Stuff

9. Where do I find it?

10. How do I know
if it’s good?

11. Recently updated?

12. Good documentation?

13. How many people maintain it?
Not a
good
choice

14. Active Community?

15. Are there companies
selling support?

16. Books?

17. Buzz?

18. OK so what do
I use?

19. Obligatory ESRI
Reference
Text
http://www.python.org/

20. Programming Language
of Choice
http://www.ruby-lang.org
def greet
puts "Hello world"
end

21. http://rubyonrails.org/

22. http://www.sinatrarb.com/

23. http://jquery.com/

24. http://www.postgresql.org/

25. http://www.sqlite.org/

26. http://www.mongodb.org/

27. http://nginx.org/

28. http://www.imagemagick.org
Text

29. GET TO THE GIS
SOFTWARE!!!

30. Desktop
Apps

31. uDig
http://udig.refractions.net/
• Uses Eclipse GUI
• Reads most standard GIS formats
(PostGIS, shapefile, WMS, WFS, WCS,
GeoRSS, KML, and images)
• Limited map making ability
• Simple editing is OK

34. GRASS
http://grass.osgeo.org
• One of the first GIS systems
• Initially developed by US ArmyConstruction
Engineering Research Laboratory in
Champaign, IL
• Incredible powerful for geoprocessing both
raster and vector
• Gives ArcInfo 7 a run for it’s money on the
UI (i.e. not good)

37. Quantum GIS
http://www.qgis.org/
• Good middle ground
• Reasonably decent UI
• Power of GRASS
• Almost comparable to ArcView
• Before you buy another license at least give
this a try

40. Databases

41. PostGIS
http://postgis.refractions.net/
• Nearly part of the PostgreSQL core
• Based off well documented standards
(OGC)
• Fast and Stable
• Large community developing and
documenting

42. MySQL Spatial
Extensions
• Incomplete and not well documented
• Not recommended unless you MUST use
MySQL

43. Spatialite
http://www.gaia-gis.it/spatialite/
• Uses much of the same guts as PostGIS
• Based on SQLite so very small and portable
• Possible exchange format
• Can use on iOS devices (GIS on your
phone)
• A little young

44. Most SQL vendors implement geography
using a version of the:
OpenGIS Implementation Specification for
Geographic information - Simple feature access
http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/sfs

45. Data Formats

46. Most Common
• ESRI Shapefile
• De facto standard
• Documented by ESRI
http://www.esri.com/library/whitepapers/pdfs/shapefile.pdf

47. Well Known Text (WKT)
&
Well Known Binary (WKB)
• Used in database records
• Well documented
• Compact

48. Example
POINT(6 10) =
010100000000000000000018400000000000002440
LINESTRING(3 4,10 50,20 25) =
01020000000300000000000000000008400000000000001040000000
00000024400000000000004940000000000000344000000000000039
40

49. GML
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Geography_Markup_Language
• OGC/ISO Standard
• Encoded in XML and like XML can be used
for good or evil
• Most other open formats take their cue
from this format

50. Example
<gml:Point gml:id="p21" srsName="urn:ogc:def:crs:EPSG:6.6:4326">
<gml:coordinates>45.67, 88.56</gml:coordinates>
</gml:Point>

51. GeoJSON
http://geojson.org
• JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)
encoded
• Very similar to GML but a little more
streamlined
• Different than the ESRI JSON format

52. Example
{ "type": "Point", "coordinates": [100.0, 0.0] }
{ "type": "Polygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[100.0, 0.0], [101.0, 0.0], [101.0, 1.0],
[100.0, 1.0], [100.0, 0.0]
]
]
}

53. GeoRSS
http://georss.org
• Essentially a streamlined version of GML
• Used in RSS feeds
• Used by Yahoo in a lot of data streams

54. Example
<georss:point>
45.256 -71.92
</georss:point>

55. KML
http://code.google.com/apis/kml/documentation
• Initially developed for Keyhole (Keyhole
Markup Language) which was changed to
Google Earth after being acquired
• As it’s name implies this is a markup
language and is more suited to presenting
GIS data than exchanging it
• Now an open standard and supported by
Google Earth, NASA Worldwind, and ESRI

56. Example
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<kml xmlns="http://www.opengis.net/kml/2.2">
<Placemark>
<name>Simple placemark</name>
<description>Attached to the ground. Intelligently places itself
at the height of the underlying terrain.</description>
<Point>
<coordinates>-122.0822035425683,37.42228990140251,0</coordinates>
</Point>
</Placemark>
</kml>

57. GPX
http://www.topografix.com/gpx.asp
• GPS eXchange Format
• XML based
• Fairly easy to read and write
• Lots of support in consumer GPS devices

58. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no" ?>
<gpx ...>
<metadata>
<link href="http://www.garmin.com">
<text>Garmin International</text>
</link>
<time>2009-10-17T22:58:43Z</time>
</metadata>
<trk>
<name>Example GPX Document</name>
<trkseg>
<trkpt lat="47.644548" lon="-122.326897">
<ele>4.46</ele>
<time>2009-10-17T18:37:26Z</time>
</trkpt>
<trkpt lat="47.644548" lon="-122.326897">
<ele>4.94</ele>
<time>2009-10-17T18:37:31Z</time>
</trkpt>
<trkpt lat="47.644548" lon="-122.326897">
<ele>6.87</ele>
<time>2009-10-17T18:37:34Z</time>
</trkpt>
</trkseg>
</trk>
</gpx>

59. Image Formats
(some)
BMP MrSID
JP2
GeoJPG PNG
ERMapper
GeoTIFF
NITF
PCI
And many more!!!
USGS DEM DOQ
ECW NetCDF
Erdas Imagine ESRI GRID

60. GDAL/OGR
http://www.gdal.org/
• Swiss army knife of GIS!
• Converts, slices and dices data anyway you
like
• Really fast!
• Used in a bunch of OS and commercial
applications
• Using ArcGIS? - You are already using
GDAL

61. Web Mapping

62. Openlayers
http://openlayers.org/
• Only totally open, full featured, web map
viewer
• Well documented
• Can be used with ESRI ArcGIS Server as
well as many other data sources WMS,
WFS, GeoRSS, etc...

63. MapServer
http://mapserver.org/
• Original open source web mapping solution
• Akin to ESRI ArcIMS... will lead you into
madness with it’s broken HTML
• Using just the map rendering capability is
OK

64. Mapnik
http://mapnik.org/
• Beautiful Rendering
• Exceptionally difficult to compile
• May be a little slow compared to
MapServer
• Used by Google and Apple

65. Tilecache
http://tilecache.org/
• Nice small python web service
• Will serve tiles ala Google Maps statically
or on demand
• Lots of options for increasing web serving
performance (memcached, HTTP headers)

66. GeoDjango
http://geodjango.org/
• Django is a python web framework for
designing applications quickly
• This is a very nice extension that adds a
variety of methods for interacting with
spatial data using PostGIS, GEOS, and
PROJ4

67. Free but not open
• Google Earth
• Google Maps
• Microsoft Bing
• Yahoo Maps
• Mapquest

68. http://lakecountyil.gov

69. Other Cool Geo API’s
• 4Square
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Flickr

70. Open Streetmap
http://www.openstreetmap.org/
• Totally open dataset of features
• Based on TIGER (in USA) and updated by
individuals
• Variable precision
• Excellent cartography
• Made using open source GIS software

71. EveryBlock
http://everyblock.com
• Second evolution of ChicagoCrime.org
• Excellent User Interface
• Uses Openlayers and Mapnik

73. Warning!
Extreme Technical
Content ahead!

74. libLAS
http://liblas.org
• Library and executables
• Can convert raw LAS to a variety of
formats using advanced filtering
• Can get detailed info and compare LAS files
• Supported by Iowa DNR and US Army

75. GEOS
http://trac.osgeo.org/geos/
• Geometry Engine, Open Source (GEOS)
• Backbone of PostGIS and Spatialite
• Also used in Quantum GIS, GRASS, OGR,
Ingres, MapServer, and GeoDjango

76. PROJ
http://trac.osgeo.org/proj/
• Library and executable
• Will project to and from anything
• Used in almost all OS GIS projects

77. A little note about
projections

78. EPSG/WKID Codes
http://www.epsg.org/Geoodetic.html
• European Petroleum Survey Group (EPSG)
initially developed a list of projections for
easy reference
• Also known as Well Known ID’s (WKID)
• A good searchable index is:
spatialreference.org

79. EPSG:3435
vs
PROJCS["NAD83 / Illinois East (ftUS)",
GEOGCS["NAD83",
DATUM["North_American_Datum_1983",
SPHEROID["GRS 1980",6378137,298.257222101,
AUTHORITY["EPSG","7019"]],
AUTHORITY["EPSG","6269"]],
PRIMEM["Greenwich",0,
AUTHORITY["EPSG","8901"]],
UNIT["degree",0.01745329251994328,
AUTHORITY["EPSG","9122"]],
AUTHORITY["EPSG","4269"]],
UNIT["US survey foot",0.3048006096012192,
AUTHORITY["EPSG","9003"]],
PROJECTION["Transverse_Mercator"],
PARAMETER["latitude_of_origin",36.66666666666666],
PARAMETER["central_meridian",-88.33333333333333],
PARAMETER["scale_factor",0.999975],
PARAMETER["false_easting",984250.0000000002],
PARAMETER["false_northing",0],
AUTHORITY["EPSG","3435"],
AXIS["X",EAST],
AXIS["Y",NORTH]]