IntraMaps Roam first release - Windows QGIS Data Collection

Digital Mapping Solutions, and Nathan Woodrow, would like to announce the first version of IntraMaps Roam - a simple, but flexible, Windows based data collection application built using Python and QGIS.

IntraMaps Roam (or Roam for short) is a standalone, fully bundled, Python application that was created to do data collection with a QGIS backend. For those of you who have seen my QMap project Nathan started a year or so ago you can consider this a reincarnation of that project. Most of the code has been reworked and using the QGIS libs gave him full flexibility in layout.

The release page can be found at https://github.com/DMS-Aus/Roam/releases/tag/v2.0 and the wiki with all the information to get started at: https://github.com/DMS-Aus/Roam/wiki You can also take a look at the FAQ for the common questions: https://github.com/DMS-Aus/Roam/wiki/FAQ

Roam has been a great exercise in using and bundling QGIS libs with a Python application.

As Roam is based on PyQt and QGIS it is under the GPL2 license. Pull requests are welcome.

Links:

• https://github.com/DMS-Aus/Roam/releases/tag/v2.0
• https://github.com/DMS-Aus/Roam/wiki
• https://github.com/DMS-Aus/Roam/wiki/FAQ

Happy mapping!

Announcing MapServer MapManager 1.0

Digital Mapping Solutions along with Tamas Szekeres is pleased to announce the open source release of MapServer MapManager.
MapServer MapManager is an easy to use Windows desktop GUI application (based on the MapScript C# API and GDAL C# API) that allows you to easily create and configure great looking MapServer map files. The application provides a set of dialogues for setting the various properties in the map configuration and renders the map directly on the screen allowing panning and zooming of the displayed area by using the mouse. The MapManager user interface provides common operations for selecting the features and inspecting the attributes for setting up labelling and changing the style and symbology. The created map configuration can then be saved into a map file which can be used by various MapServer CGI/MapScript applications. Mapserver MapManager also allows users to save the map images in various output formats supported by MapServer.

MapServer MapManager is provided with GPLv3 license.
The build SDK from gisinternals can be used to compile MapManager. For more information about building MapManager please refer to the Readme file.
Windows installers are provided in the following download locations. Certain GDAL drivers are provided as separate installers due to their custom licensing terms. When installing the GDAL driver plugins you should select the MapManager install location as the target directory.
Installers based on the current MapServer release (6.4.1)
MapServer MapManager
GDAL ECW driver
GDAL FileGDB driver
GDAL MrSID driver
GDAL Oracle driver

Installers based on the current MapServer stable branch (6.4) (compiled daily)
MapServer MapManager
GDAL ECW driver
GDAL FileGDB driver
GDAL MrSID driver
GDAL Oracle driver

For more information about using MapManager please refer to the online help.

Mapserver daily builds has been added to osgeo4w

The build server at http://www.gisinternals.com/sdk/ has now been configured to provide daily built packages (x86 and x64) from the latest MapServer development and stable branches.

In addition to the mapserver core, the python and the java packages are also provided.

In the osgeo4w package selection page the following packages can be selected:

1. mapserver,mapserver-python,mapserver-java -> corresponds to the latest release (these packages are being built manually as soon as a new release is issued)
2. mapserver-dev,mapserver-python-dev,mapserver-java-dev -> corresponds to the latest master branch
3. mapserver-stable-dev,mapserver-python-stable-dev,mapserver-java-stable-dev -> corresponds to the latest stable branch

When using the -dev and -stable-dev packages You should re-run the osgeo4w installer regularly to be up to date with the recent builds

MapServer SVG symbol support

Windows builds at gisinternals are now provided with SVG symbol support in MapServer. For more information about this feature see this article SVG Symbol support in MapServer.

Issue tracker for gisinternals.com

The build system at www.gisinternals.com has been added to github. Reporting issues or enhancement requests related to the build system can now be posted to the github issue tracker.

www.gisinternals.com is down

GisInternals support site will not be available until Monday due to hardware maintenance.

QGIS MS SQL provider has been added

Thanks to the support of Digital Mapping Solutions, Nathan Woodrow and I have now added the new native MS SQL provider in the QGIS mainstream. The new provider now supports full featured read-write access to the MS SQL databases. By using the dragdrop support in the browser window you can easily push layers up to the database. The driver creates fully registered layers (by adding entries to the spatial_ref_sys and geometry_columns metadata tables) which are compatible with the GDAL MSSQL driver as well (to take advantage of the author being the same :-). In the heat of the work we have also enabled the dragdrop upload capability for the PostGIS provider.
We encourage you to give it a try and let us know if you find issues, by adding an entry to the QGIS issue tracker.