Mapguide Open Source

[Bertoldo Beyer]

MapGuideOpen Source is a web-based map-making platform that enables users to quickly develop and deploy web mapping applications and geospatial web services. The application was introduced as open-source by Autodesk in November 2005, and the code was contributed to the Open Source Geospatial Foundation in March 2006 under the GNU LGPL.

MapGuide features an interactive viewer that includes support for feature selection, property inspection, map tips, and operations such as buffer, select within, and measure. MapGuide includes an XML database for storing and managing content, and supports most common geospatial file formats, databases, and standards. The MapGuide platform can be deployed on Linux or Microsoft Windows, supports Apache and IIS web servers, and offers extensive PHP, .NET, Java, and JavaScript APIs for application development.

MapGuide was first introduced as Argus MapGuide in 1995 by Argus Technologies in Calgary, Alberta. In the fall of 1996, Autodesk acquired Argus Technologies and within a few months the first release under the Autodesk brand was introduced, Autodesk MapGuide 2.0. The software progressed through a number of releases leading up to the current Autodesk MapGuide 6.5. To this day MapGuide 6.5 and previous releases are known for ease of deployment, rapid application development, data connectivity, scalability, and overall performance.

Despite its success, the MapGuide 6.5 architecture has some inherent limitations. To this day most MapGuide applications rely upon a client Plug-in, ActiveX Control, or Java applet with much of the application logic written in JavaScript using the APIs offered by the client-side plug-in. All spatial analysis is performed client-side on rendered graphics rather than on the underlying spatial data. And finally the server platform is very Windows-centric.

In spring 2004 a team of developers at Autodesk began work on what is now MapGuide Open Source. Their goals were to retain all of the best aspects of MapGuide 6.5 while also meeting the goals set out above. The project was then submitted to the Open Source Geospatial Foundation in March 2006 under the LGPL license.

The MapGuide Internals site is the home of MapGuide's open development process. Here you can see the project roadmap, browse the source code, submit defect and enhancement requests by creating a new ticket, and view existing tickets.

You cannot use the windows installer to in-place upgrade an existing MapGuide Open Source 3.1.0 installation, you cannot have 3.1.0 and 3.1.2 installed side-by-side with the windows installer and you must uninstall 3.1.0 before installing 3.1.2. Use the InstantSetup bundle if side-by-side installs are required. Be sure to back up any data and applications before carrying out the new installation.

On linux, the install path is /usr/local/mapguideopensource-3.1.2 and the FDO install path is /usr/local/fdo-4.1.0. You must uninstall 3.1.0 before installing 3.1.2. Be sure to back up any data and applications before carrying out the new installation.

Before upgrading, it is recommended that you take a backup of your existing repository (whether that is through creating MGP packages with the MapGuide Site Administrator or using the provided repository backup tools/scripts)

Due to the default installation location (under Program Files), you may need to do this under a UAC-elevated command prompt or fix the directory permissions so that normal users can create/modify files.

I am relatively new to MapGuide open source technology. I would like to parse and modify data that is in SDF format so that my map displays this updated feature data (dynamically). How can i do so? I have MapGuide installed and configured on Linux. I went through the MapGuide Web API documentation but there were no examples on how to manipulate SDF data. Currently i am generating the SDF data in a different environment (in a Windows OS domain) by using scripts to query a spatial database and the query generates SHP files. I then transform those SHP files into SDF files (using scripts) before transferring them to the MapGuide server repository in the Linux OS environment. On the Windows OS end, I am able to edit the SHP files (in particular the dbf file just using a spread sheet) to change the values for the particular feature source. However this process is static and so i was hoping to be able to do so programmatically (using java / jsp) by parsing the SDF files for the particular feature source in the Linux domain. Thanks

Okay.. from what i have learnt elsewhere...The SDF data cannot be edited directly using the Java Web API, instead Mapguide uses FDO which is an abstraction layer for accessing spatial data using a common api. FDO on MapGuide Open SourceHope this helps anyone with a similar question to my original question.

While it is not in my immediate plans to rewrite MapGuide Maestro's UI in Avalonia, I wanted to at least explore the feasibility of building such a UI even if all the actual functionality is mocked up, just to see how easy or difficult the whole process is.

I had first heard about Avalonia when it was formerly known as Perspex and at the time, from the screenshots of example Perspex applications on Windows and non-Windows platforms, it was clear at that point in time the range of possible applications one can build with Perspex was quite limited and building an application like Maestro on top of Perspex was not feasible.

Just recently, I had heard about the framework now known as Avalonia again and this time round there was a lot more positive buzz around it, so I gave it another look and was much more impressed at its capabilities and richer suite of UI controls to build applications with.

The main driver behind this decision is because of my intention to remove the recently introduced support for Mapbox Vector Tiles. While I initially had high hopes with this implementation, additional testing with data outside of the example Sheboygan dataset has revealed rendering issues I do not have the capability to address. Rather than ship a half-baked implementation that may never bake fully, I'd rather bow out while we still can, remove this immature implementation, and leave MVT tile generation to dedicated external tools.

The reason for finally putting out a new release (besides being long overdue!), is that I needed a solid verification of the vanilla SWIG API binding work for MapGuide Open Source 4.0 and mapguide-rest was just the ideal project that touches almost every nook and cranny of the MapGuide API. So if mapguide-rest still works with the PHP binding in MapGuide Open Source 4.0, that is as good of an endorsement to the reliability and readiness of these bindings.

Don't like these base layers and want to bring your own? You can do that now too! If you have an XYZ tile set or WMTS service you want as a backdrop for your map previews, you can define such layers in your settings.json like so:

This update also refactors the viewer HTML preparation by fetching the document (to be previewed) content on viewer init instead of embedding its content into the viewer HTML. This should improve responsiveness when previewing larger files, to the point that you can make out the new preview preparation message.

However, as I started to test this with bigger and bigger files, I eventually found a limit where the VSCode APIs will not cooperate with us. This limit is the point where VSCode will either not do syntax highlighting or tokenization or both and when we try to preview such a file, it will silently fail.

The most important aspect of this announcement was that come October 2023 (a month from now), current stamen tile URLs may stop redirecting/working and you should have migrated over to Stadia Maps by then.

Because Stamen tiles carried the same role as OpenStreetMap as a freely accessible base tiled layer for various open source projects of mine, this announcement has thrown a spanner in my works because come next month, Stamen tiles may not work and for continued support for these layers would require migration over to Stadia Maps.

Because continued support for stamen map tiles requires migrating the extension over to use Stadia Maps, we might as well take this opportunity to add support in the extension for other base layers that Stadia Maps offers. And while we're at it, we might as well go all the way and add in Bing Maps, XYZ and WMTS base layers as well.

Firstly, the 6.0m12 release of MapGuide Maestro formally drops all Fusion editor support for integration with Google Maps tiles and services. We no longer support Google Maps integration in Fusion and the editor in previous releases gave the false impression that this is still possible. That is no longer the case with this release.

Secondly, the more important thing (and the subject of this post) is that if you are using the Maestro API and consume this through nuget packages from nuget.org you may be wondering why there are no new versions?

The answer to that one is simply: My nuget package publishing keys have expired and something in the nuget.org website or something with my nuget.org account is preventing me from regenerating these keys or to generate a fresh set. As a result, I currently cannot upload any new nuget packages to nuget.org

If/when I get a resolution on this publishing key matter, I will upload the .nupkg files for this release and make another announcement. Until then, this local package source is a suitable workaround.

Gordon Luckett of ArrowGeomatics has done multiple projects integrating databases with Cesium using MapGuide Open Source. With Cesium, one is able to stream any datasource, including SHP, SHF, SQLite, Oracle Spatial, SQL Server Spatial, and PostGIS data. The data is streamed from the MapGuide web server. This server, using a client called MapGuide Maestro, enables developers to connect to the data of their choice and create a styled layer to add to Cesium.

For example, using MapGuide and mapguide-rest, ArrowGeomatics added a layer of buildings in Nanaimo, Canada, to Cesium. The CZML was directly streamed from a 2D + height shapefile. Check out the demo at Arrow Geomatics Inc., Nanaimo Cesium Demo.

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