Geomajas: backend 1.9.0 + 10 plug-in releases

Yes, you read the title correctly. 11 new Geomajas releases saw the daylight in the last 2 weeks, among which a new version of the backend. Next to the backend, 10 plug-in releases saw daylight, among which 2 new plug-ins (caching plug-in & REST face). Needless to say, the community has been incredibly active the last couple of months to get so many releases out.

I would like to quickly list all plugins that have been released but for a more detailed description regarding all releases, visit the following link: New Geomajas releases

Full list:

• Geomajas backend 1.9.0: mainly a bugfix release, but also adds new functionality such as mixed Geometry support, lazy attribute conversion, ECQL support, speed improvements, ...
• REST face 1.0.0: Ability to serialize GeoJson from the Geomajas back-end. This first version only support read-only requests. Compatible with OpenLayers.
• Caching plug-in 1.0.0: Back-end caching of features, requests, tiles,... Uses the Infinispan technology.
• Google layer 1.8.0: Now includes a GWT module for copyright display.
• GeoTools layer 1.8.0: Upgrade to GeoTools 2.7.1.
• Hibernate layer 1.8.0: Has now better support for lazy attribute handling. Has been completely refactored resulting in a big performance gain.
• WMS layer 1.8.0: Better proxy and authentication support.
• OpenStreetMap layer 1.9.0: Bugfix release
• Geocoder plug-in 1.1.0: Bugfix release
• Printing plug-in 2.1.0: Bugfix release
• Static security plug-in 1.8.0: Bugfix release

GIS (Geomajas) @ Jazoon conference

Currently in Zurich, the Jazoon conference is being held. Jazoon is Europe's premier Java and Open Source Developer Conference (I just copied the words here), and for once it's not all about new Java technologies, or big corporations doing their thing. No this time, we find an interesting topic about GIS among the many presentations.
The presentation is called "Mapping, GIS and geolocating data in Java" and is presented by Joachim van der Auwera (Geosparc). In this, I wish him the best of luck. May he spread the word of Open Source GIS.

What's more is that in preparation of this conference Joachim has written an article explaining the Geomajas framework. Since this is a good read for anyone interested in either GIS or Geomajas, I thought I'd share it: http://blog.progs.be/?p=142

Geomajas 1.8.0 released!

Geomajas 1.8.0 released!
The Geomajas project is proud to release Geomajas 1.8.0, the latest stable release. The major advances in this version include:

• Update to the newest versions of GWT, SmartGwt, ...
• French language support.
• Better integration support within non-GWT technologies.
• Performance improvements.
• Addition of multiple passive controllers on the map.
• On-the-fly changing of layer order

For the full list of changes, see:

• GWT face
• Geomajas Back-end

If you are new to Geomajas and would like to quickly test it for yourself, there is a "Getting Started" guide that explains how to quickly get up-and-running using a Maven Archetype. Basically, if you have Maven installed, you can create a Geomajas project in just a few minutes - so don't hesitate to try.

If you want to help us, join the discussions on the developer list, list bugs in jira and make feature requests in our fora. See http://www.geomajas.org/.

Geomajas 1.8.0 backend & GWT face in staging

As of now, a new version of the Geomajas backend and the Geomajas GWT face have been placed in staging, awaiting community approval to be released. The vote has been started on the mailing list, and will end thursday 27 januari 12:00 CET. 

If by that time the release has not been rejected, it will become the official 1.8.0 release of the Geomajas GWT face. At that time, we will immediately update the online showcase and the maven archetype for building new Geomajas projects. A preview of the new showcase can already be found here.

To see the full list of solved issues, visit the Geomajas issue tracker. In order to test this release for yourself, the staging repository can be found at the following location:

https://oss.sonatype.org/content/groups/staging

Next to the jar files, this maven repository will also contain sources, javadoc and documentation (HTML + PDF).

Have fun testing!

Feature Information plug-in for Geomajas

Good news for the Geomajas community as DFC, a Belgian GIS Software company, made a proposal for an advanced feature information plug-in. This plug-in would be an extension for the Geomajas GWT face and introduce  a couple of new widgets for handling and displaying the attribute information of features on the map.

I will go over them one by one, to further explain their functionality. Some of the images might contain text in Dutch - sorry for that.

Search Result Table
A tab-based widget for storing the results of a search in a table, where each table would have some additional options:

Tree based feature attribute info
A floating window containing the attribute information of multiple features for multiple vector layers within a tree structure. Two version will be made: one where the attribute values are displayed within the tree itself, and one where the actual attribute information will be displayed outside of the tree (at the bottom).