Part 0
upload a shapefile of vector data using this connection: ftp://anonymous@128.210.124.135
upload a geotiff using the same connection
feel free to use data from your semester project (or not — just try to keep it to less than 100MB or so)
Part 1
Visit our test GeoServer instance and login using your career alias and group password (3asgio)
Note the capabilities links at right. These are getCapabilities documents of the sort we’ve seen several times now — they detail what the server is capable of; what layers it serves, what projections it supports, etc.
Now note the different admin sections at left. Most of these we’ll leave alone, but the “Stores” section is where we tell GeoServer about data we have on the system.
click “Stores,” then “Add new Store”
You’ll be presented with a list of different types of content you can add to GeoServer. The server we’re using in this lab is bare-bones, so only a few formats are supported.
Click “Shapefile,” name your data source after yourself (career account alias) and give it a description, then tell GeoServer where to find your data.
A note, though: GeoServer assumes all of the data it needs is under a master directory called “data_dir” on the server itself. The data you uploaded in Part 0 went into a subfolder, so the ultimate path is /usr/local/geoserver/data_dir/data/eas591, but GeoServer assumes most of that. The path you enter will looke more like “file:data/eas591/your_file.shp” (see screencap for a sample)
Click “Save,” then “Publish”
On the next screen, accept default Name and Title values, but write a short abstract
Going against most of what I ranted about this semester, we’ll leave the keyword and metadata links blank just this once.
Below that is the Coordinate Reference System block: ideally this will auto-fill.
If “Native SRS” doesn’t auto-fill based on your data, you can still add a “Declared SRS.” You’ll need to know the coordinate reference system of your data, though, in order to click “Find…” and locate it in the list. If neither is true, you’ll need to go examine your data (either directly or through their metadata) to discover this information.
Once the CRS block is filled in, you can compute the Native and Lat/Lon boxes and click “Save.”
Simply click the “compute” links below each. See screencap for a completed sample.
We could have gone into the “Publishing” tab here to set some additional options and customizations (including giving your data a specifc, non-default style), but let’s not press our luck.
Also, note that what you’ve done here is tell GeoServer two things. 1) That it should connect to your data source, and 2) that it should be a layer available to the world. It is entirely possible to use the same source to serve out different versions or subsets of it. In fact, older versions of the GeoServer administrative panel would make you first set up a data store, then go into a completely different area of the interface to create a layer from that source. “You’re welcome!” (says GeoServer)
Visit GeoServer’s Preview page to see your data now being served.
…Not “being served” as in slang, rather spewed out to the world for consumption by GIS and other software clients. In fact, notice that by default the data are now previewable in OpenLayers and as KML, but also (with no additional work by you) available in a number of new formats.
Among these are the common, standardized web service protocols we saw several times in class, including WMS (vector and raster), WFS (for vectors), and WCS (rasters). You would be wise to test your layer as a WMS service, as that’s one way I’ll be grading the lab — if I can connect to your layer via WMS you get your points, if not you don’t (barring technical errors beyond your control).
Part 2
Set up another Source+Layer, but this time using a geotiff raster source.
Part 3
Using a client of your choice, connect to *each* of your two layers and submit screen captures of your data as they appear in your client.