Archive for May, 2008

WFSHarvester on SourceForge

Friday, May 23rd, 2008

The WFSHarvester is now an Open Source project on SourceForge.
Project website: http://wfsharvester.sourceforge.net
SourceForge site: http://sourceforge.net/projects/wfsharvester

There is not a lot to find though. At this moment I am adding comments to the source files, cleaning up some stuff, writing a few lines of documentation. When this is done I will put it in the SourceForge.

After that I will create some sample files and a simple client for testing.

WFS Harvester to go Open Source

Thursday, May 22nd, 2008

Because the WFS Harvester is so simple and might be useful for other organisations as well I’ve decided to create an Open Source project. Apart from making the harvester available to other people, I also hope someone might improve it :)

WFS Harvester

Thursday, May 22nd, 2008

For a project it is necessary to harvest data from several distributed WFS’s and put the data in a central WFS. A simple and configurable WFS Harvester is developed to perform this task. Because a few easy to configure configuration files are used it can be used relatively easy for different WFS’s.

The WFS Harvester requires 4 parameters:
1. XML file
2. URL of WFS
3. URL of WFS-T (Transactional WFS)
4. XSL file

The XML file contains a GetFeature request. This request is sent to a WFS. The XML result of this request is transformed into a Transaction request using the XSL file. This transaction request is then sent to the WFS-T.

Of course it could be improved by requesting for the capabilities of a WFS and so on, but now it’s an easy simple library. The XSL file allows for example to copy WFS data from one datamodel into different datamodel and store it in another WFS.

TomTom finally gets approval to buy TeleAtlas

Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

Months later than hoped TomTom gets the approval of the European Commissioner for Competition, Neelie Smit Kroes, to take over Tele Atlas. Neelie Smit Kroes ordered an additional research to investigate the consequences for the map/navigation market. The investigation established that enough competition remains.

The main concern for the EC was that TomTom/TeleAtlas might raise the price or restrict access to digital maps for other PND (personal navigation device) manufacturers. The EC finds that this is unlikely as there is a competitor, Navteq.