- GeoServer is an open source Java web application for sharing geospatial data. It publishes data from any major spatial data source using open standards like WMS, WFS, WCS, and WPS. - The GeoServer team has 13 releases in 2016 with a focus on maintenance and technical debt. New features include improved raster data support, styling enhancements, and configuration changes. - Looking ahead, focus areas include vector data improvements, raster optimizations, maintenance, and improving support for newer Java versions and standards.

1. State of
GeoServer 2016
Victoria GeoGeeks

2. Andrea Aime
Technical Lead
andrea.aime@geo-solutions.it
@geowolf
GeoSolutions
Innovative, robust and cost-effective solutions
leveraging best-of-breed Open Source products.
Welcome
Open Source Projects
GeoTools
GeoServer
ImageIO-Ext
JAI-Ext
JAI Tools
OSGeo Foundation
Charter Member

3. Jody Garnett
Community Lead
jgarnett@boundlessgeo.com
@jodygarnett
Boundless
Provides geospatial tools and services for
managing data and building applications.
Welcome
Open Source Projects
GeoTools
GeoServer
uDig
OSGeo Foundation
Board Member
OSGeo Incubation Chair
GeoTools Project Officer
Eclipse Foundation
LocationTech Steering Committee
LocationTech Technology Project

4. GeoServer 2016

5. GeoServer at a Glance
Java Web Application to share and
edit geospatial data.
Publish data from any major spatial
data source using open standards.
Core Protocols
WMS – maps
WFS – vector
WFS-T – editing
WCS – coverage
WPS – process
Tile Protocols
WMTS – tiles
TileService – tiles
WMS-C – tiles

6. 28 → 37 members of team geoserver
624 → 619 members on geoserver-devel
500+ → 525 pull requests
New contributors being added
(others stepping back)
Smaller base of active contributors this year.
Pull requests still going strong, very active
codebase.
Simone replaces Andrea as OSGeo Officer.
13 releases this year
Health Checkup
How about team user-list?
1983 → 2005 geoserver-users
Also geoserver-italia, espanol and opengeo.cn
mailing lists

7. Release Schedule
stable maintenance
} delay
August 2.10.5
July
June 2.10.4
May
April 2.10.3
March 2.9.5
February 2.10.2
January 2.9.4
December 2.10.1
November 2.9.3
October 2.10.0
September 2.8.5 2.9.2

8. Take care to report the issue in a responsible fashion:
● Keep exploit details out of issue report
● Mark the issue as a vulnerability.
● Be prepared to work with Project Steering Committee (PSC) on a solution
● Keep in mind PSC members are volunteers
and an extensive fix may require fundraising / resources
If you are not in position to communicate in public please consider commercial
support, contacting a PSC member, or reaching us via the Open Source
Geospatial Foundation at info@osgeo.org.
Security Vulnerabilities - Responsible Disclosure

9. Security Vulnerabilities
Fixed for GeoServer 2.9.1 (backported to 2.8.5)
● Remote Execution (RE) Vulnerability
● Limited to REST API administration
Fixed for GeoServer 2.10 (backported to 2.9.2)
● XML External Entity (XXE) Processing
● Please update now!

10. Q: “Update the headers” was the most common
feedback on incoming pull requests. Was it
needed?
A: Checked with OSGeo legal (thanks board):
- headers are an historical artifact from
before the Berne Convention
- no longer needed, now just informative.
Header Maintenance

11. Maintenance &
Technical Debt

12. ● Relying on volunteer time to keep an eye
on the codebase was not working out
○ team busy on customer work?
○ backlog of bugs piling up
● Trying an experiment
○ Once a month meeting
○ Distributed, on-line code sprint
● When:
○ Join us on November 18th!
Monthly bug fixing code sprints

13. Monthly bug fixing code sprints
● Actions
○ Vet existing tickets
○ close invalid/non reproducible ones
○ close feature requests that failed to gather
resourcing in a long time...
○ Fix bugs
● Nice side effects:
○ Gets more developers familiar with the
contents of the issue tracker
○ Opportunity to get proficient with new parts
of the code base
○ Predictable, scheduled activity

14. Wicket 7
Held sprint in victoria to clear up
this long standing technical debt!
Thanks to OSGeo, Boundless,
Vivid Solutions, How 2 Map, San
Jose Water Company, Transient,
GeoBeyond, Scitus,
GeoSolutions, CCRi, Astun
Technology, and Voyager
Search for sponsoring this work.
2.9 2.10Victoria Code Sprint

15. Java 8
GeoServer now requires Java 8.
Why? What changed ...
- Traditionally GeoServer takes forever to support the latest Java
- Oracle now charges for Java 7 security updates
2.9 2.10Joint EffortCommunity

16. Required to upgrade the “Spring Framework”
used to wire GeoServer together:
- We needed a newer version of “Spring” for
Java 8 compatibility
- Upgraded to Spring 4 → 2 month delay to
GeoServer 2.9 release
Check that your application server supports:
- Servlet 3.0 was released in 2009
- Supported by Tomcat 7 and Tomcat 8
Spring 4
2.9 2.10Joint-EffortCommunity

17. Vector data sources

18. GeoPackage module moving to supported land
● Approved “Community module” → “Official plugin” on October 26th
● Increasing test coverage
● More compatibility testing with OGR and friends
● OGC compliance tests
2.10
Ian Turton
GeoSolutions
Swedish University of
Agricultural Sciences

19. WFS cascading updates
● The original WFS client is being retired
● WFS-NG will be taking over
● Compatibility testing done with MapServer, TinyOWS, ….
2.10
Scitus
Development
Boundless
TinyOWS
ArcGIS WFS
WFS/WMS/WMTS
WFS

20. Raster data sources

21. Improved masking support
● Raster masking available for both image mosaic and GDAL data sources
● Both in vector (polygon footprint) and raster (binary mask) for
2.8 2.9 2.10GeoSolutionsLiguria digitale

22. Heterogeneous mosaics - color models
● Support for mosaics with sources in multiple color models
(RGB, gray, indexed), since 2.8.x
2.8 2.9 2.10GeoSolutions

23. Heterogeneous mosaics - resolution / projections
2.10BoundlessSOCOM
● Support for mosaics in multiple coordinate reference systems
(Coming in 2.10.x)

24. Excess granule removal
● Optimization for deep z-order mosaic stacks
● E.g., time series of scattered data
● Do not load imagery that is not contributing to the output
2.9 2.10GeoSolutionsBEV
In development!

25. Multiple coverages for mosaic and pyramid (2.10)
● Already available for multidimensional data (NetCDF, Grib)
● Now available also for “flat” data sources
● Meaningful if the sources are normally managed and used together (e.g.,
multispectral satellite data and its derived products)
2.9 2.10ImplementorBEV

26. Coverage view optimizations (2.10)
● A coverage view allows to bind together bands from different coverages
coming from the same source (e.g., NetCDF)
● Optimization to avoid reading all sources if the style is only using a subset of
the bands
A
B
C
Combiner
SLD Style
selecting only
A
Map
Hint about which bands
are actually going to be
used
GeoSolutionsBEV 2.9 2.10

27. GeoServer support for rotated pole projections
2.9 2.10
Rotated pole projection support for
GRIB2/NetCDF/ImageMosaic data stores
and WCS NetCDF output.
Publish the native GRIB2 file format of
NOAA RAPv3 North American weather
forecast model:
http://rapidrefresh.noaa.gov/
Upgraded to NetCDF Java 4.6.6 (Ben
contributed a fix in it)
TransientBoundless/NOAA

28. Styling

29. Perpendicular Offset for Lines and Polygons
<LineSymbolizer>
<Stroke>
<CssParameter name="stroke">#AAAAAA</CssParameter>
<CssParameter name="stroke-width">3</CssParameter>
</Stroke>
<PerpendicularOffset>-2</PerpendicularOffset>
</LineSymbolizer>
<LineSymbolizer>
<Stroke>
<CssParameter name="stroke">#FF0000</CssParameter>
<CssParameter name="stroke-width">3</CssParameter>
<CssParameter name="stroke-dasharray">5 2</CssParameter>
</Stroke>
<PerpendicularOffset>3</PerpendicularOffset>
</LineSymbolizer>
2.8 2.9 2.10GeoSolutionsDLR

30. ncWMS like extensions to GetMap (community)
● A new styling language designed for dynamic colormaps
● Applies to all rasters based on their statistics
● Use can control min/max, log scale, animation
2.10GeoSolutions

31. Style Page
2.10BoundlessCommunity
Refactored CSS Style
Page into the main
application.
Works with
SLD, CSS, YSLD.
Improved experience for
everybody!
Live Demo Next

32. New features for CSS (2.10)
● Rendering transformations supported (feature parity with SLD!)
● Rule nesting, helps with selector duplication and makes styles more readable
/* @title Levels */
* {
transform: ras:Contour(levels: 1100 1200 1300 1400 1500 1600 1700);
stroke: black;
z-index: 0;
}
/* @title Values */
[@scale < 3000] {
transform: ras:RasterAsPointCollection();
mark: symbol('square');
:mark {
size: 2;
fill: black;
}
label: [GRAY_INDEX];
label-anchor: 0 0.5;
label-offset: 5 0;
font-family: Arial;
font-fill: black;
z-index: 1;
}
Extract contours at the desired levels
When zoomed-in enough, extract point
values, display center with a mark, and
value on top of it
2.10Andrea AimeCommunity

33. YSLD community module
● Style Layer Descriptor represented in
YAML
○ Uses indentation rather than XML
○ Easier to read
○ More compact
○ More flexible syntax
○ Contains variables for reusable code
○ Compatible with SLD
● REST API can convert formats
○ Preview your existing styles as YSLD
using REST API
○ View the SLD representation of YSLD
2.10Implementor
symbolizers:
- polygon:
stroke-color: 'blue'
stroke-width: 1
fill-color: '#7EB5D3'
- text:
label: ${name}
fill-color: 'black'
anchor: [0.5, 0.5]
x-maxDisplacement: 40
x-autoWrap: 70
Community

34. Custom Legend Graphic
Take control of the legend graphic
(Advertised in WMS GetCapapabilities).
Legend shown in compatible clients
when listing your layer.
2.9 2.10BoundlessBoundless

35. Improved QGIS Compatibility
● Additional custom “Well Known” marks
● Support for SLD 1.1 External Marks
● SVG Parameters 1.0 spec
<PointSymbolizer>
<Graphic>
<ExternalGraphic>
<OnlineResource xlink:type="simple" xlink:href="firestation.svg?fill=#FF0000" />
<Format>image/svg</Format>
</ExternalGraphic>
<size>128</size>
</Graphic>
</PointSymbolizer>
2.10Andrea AimeCommunity

36. WMS

37. image/vnd.jpeg-png
● Smart format, chooses
between JPEG and PNG
depending on image
contents
● JPEG for max
compression on fully
opaque images
● PNG when transparency is
needed
● Supported both in WMS
and WMTS
PNG PNG PNG
PNG JPEG JPEG
2.9 2.10GeoSolutions

38. UTFGrid (format=application/json;type=utfgrid)
● MapBox style UTFGrid
output for WMS and
WMTS
● More flexibility
○ Non square tiles
○ Available in all projections
● Of course you can limit
yourself to simple tiles
2.9 2.10GeoSolutionsCianad

39. Vector Extension
Community module for
publishing vector tiles
- Great solution for
modern High Definition
Screens
- Use for GeoWebCache
for “MapBox without
MapBox”
- (see talk tomorrow)
2.10ImplementorCustomer

40. Tiling

41. MBTiles like storage
● Store tiles in MBTiles database
● Possibility to use many databases, following a pattern, e.g.,
○ /path/to/{grid}/{dim}/{tileset}/{z}/{x}-{y}.sqlite (x and y are actually groups of values)
○ Helps with scalability, especially if not fully seeded
● Allows to store non Google Mercator projections (extension)
● Allows to store formats other than png or jpeg (extension)
● Stores in lookup table creation date for expiration support
● REST API to replace single files (automate migration from seeding
machine to serving ones)
● Not compatible with disk quota!
https://github.com/GeoWebCache/geowebcache/wiki/MBTiles-BlobStore
2.9 2.10GeoSolutionsCapgemini

42. WMTS config page
● Allows WMTS to have
its own service
metadata configured
from the UI
● Adds a point where the
INSPIRE module can
plug into for extra
configuration
2.9 2.10GeoSolutionsBEV

43. WMTS workspace specific and INSPIRE
compatibility
● WMTS now works also as a
workspace specific service (finally
tile caching for multitenant setups)
● Allows to setup INSPIRE
harmonized layer names
● INSPIRE module extended to inject
INSPIRE minimum metadata in
WMTS GetCapabilities output
Workspace
1
Workspace
2
INSPIRE
compliant
Generic
tiles
2.9 2.10GeoSolutionsBEV

44. WMS/WMTS ND discovery extensions
● Data with N dimensions (time, elevation, custom ones)
● Dimensions can be related (forecasts, time and run time), the data can be
scattered (remote sensing), hard to locate data in the ND cube
● Add extra calls to query the domains
● Check the current specification and give us feedback
2.9 2.10GeoSolutionsBEV
In development!
http://demo.geo-solutions.it/share/wmts-multidim/wmts_multidim_geosolutions.html

45. WPS

46. Improved WPS resource control
● Processes are run in thread pools, they
can wait for their execution slot in queue
● Separate control for total time, and pure
execution time
2.10utas.edu.au

47. Download process improvements (community)
● Community module for
“clip and ship” support
● Asynch requests allow for large
extractions
● Can have maximum extraction
limits configured
● Added ability to also select
bands, and improved output size
estimation
WPS
2.9 2.10GeoSolutionsBEV

48. Configuration and management

49. Signed “OSGeo” Distributions Available
Required for macOS 10.12 Sierra Required for Windows 10
2.9 2.10BoundlessOSGeo

50. ● Allows GeoServer to store resources
(icons, fonts, config files) in either file
system or database “blobs”.
● Run without a “Data Directory”
(Helpful in clustered/cloud environment)
● All instances of file access were converted
to resource api
● Backwards compatible - file will be
unpacked on disk if required
● Manage via REST API
● GUI available as community module
Resource API
2.9 2.10
Scitus
Development
Boundless/NGA
Web Services
Configuration
Data
Directory
ResourceCatalog
Web Services
Configuration
JDBCStore
ResourceCatalog

51. Web interface in Tools / Resource Browser
● Manage and edit resources
● Data Directory or JDBCStore
● Community module
● Packaged plugin coming soon
Resource Browser (community)
2.10
Scitus
Development
Boundless/NGA

52. Module “status” REST API (and GUI)
● Automated testing of GeoServer is a
challenge
● REST API access to the “status page”
● Easy to add additional entries
● Used to check environment for difficult to
configure modules that use native code
2.9 2.10BoundlessBoundless QA
Module name: Rendering Engine
● Module : jvm
● Component : java2d
● Version : 1.8.0_66
● Enabled : true
● Available : true
● Message : Java 2D configured with
DuctusRenderingEngine.
● Provider: OracleJDK
geoserver/rest/about/status

53. Parametric configuration
● Switching data directories between
integration/beta/production environments can
be a pain
● GeoServer 2.10 allows to stick parameters in
the configuration, and read them from the
environment
● Look ma, switching environments without
grep/sed on the data dir :-)
● Store params in property file, system or
environment variables
2.9 2.10GeoSolutions
Eumetsat
World Bank

54. Backup/restore (community)
● Save the configuration to a zip file (not the
data!)
● Restore later, in the same or different
environment
● UI to run backup and restore
● Asynch operations
○ During backup the configuration is forced read only
○ During restore it’s fully locked
2.9 2.10GeoSolutions
Eumetsat
World Bank

55. Backup/restore (community)
● Can do a “dry run”
to check if there is
any error prior to
restore
2.9 2.10GeoSolutions
Eumetsat
World Bank

56. Backup/restore (community)
● REST API to run, control,
eventually cancel backups and
restores
2.9 2.10GeoSolutions
Eumetsat
World Bank

57. Security

58. LDAP User Group Service
● We previously only had an “authentication
provider”, meaning, it used the
username/pw provided and tried to open
a LDAP connection with them
● We now also have a “user group
service”,it opens a LDAP connection
using fixed credentials, and searches the
user in the LDAP database, matching the
password
● E.g., similar to storing users in a DBMS
2.10
Scitus
development
?

59. Research and Development

60. GeoGig (community)
Manage repositories and publish via
WFS and WFS-T for web client
access.
2.9 2.10BoundlessGeoGig

61. GeoGig (community)
curl -X PUT -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{
"parentDirectory": "/opt/geogig/repos",
"authorName": "geogig",
"authorEmail": "geogig@geogig.org"
}'
"http://localhost:8080/geoserver/geogig/repos/myrepo/init"
REST API for managing
repositories, when combined
with GeoServer REST API a
wide range of scripts are
possible.
2.9 2.10BoundlessGeoGig

62. Looking Ahead

63. Java 9 Compatibility
Java 9 has been delayed until 2017, but we
would like to ensure GeoServer will function.
Oracle will stop shipping free security updates to
Java 8 on
We have a couple incompatibilities with the
GeoTools “service provider interface” plugin
system that we will look at resolving during the
code sprint!

64. The Java Advanced Imaging library enables
GeoServer to do all kinds of great image
processing! The JAI-EXT project extends this
library with replacement no-data / footprint
aware operations.
Sadly Oracle has not maintained the project,
and has not released it as open source.
(see Replace-JAI on GeoTools wiki)
Raster Processing Engine
Joint OSGeo / LocationTech game plan:
● Raster Processing Engine API
definition of raster-processing-api
● Raster Processing Engine
reference pure-java implementation
● Raster Processing Wrapper
benchmark jai-wrapper implementation
● GeoTools Replace JAI
migrate to raster processing engine api
and coordinate transition affected projects
(GeoServer, GeoNode, uDig, GeoScript,
etc...)

65. Thanks!