Preface

Until a decade ago, spatial data and the art of map building were considered tricky and complex—almost reserved for highly skilled and specialized professionals.

The advent of web mapping has changed the way geography is perceived by people. This has been largely powered by a few types of open source software that made it possible for everyone to collect, manage, and publish spatial data on the Internet.

GeoServer is one of these precious gems. Along with open JavaScript frameworks such as OpenLayers and Leaflet, it gives everyone the tools they need to create a powerful map server and lightweight applications that run in modern browsers. This allows users to show data visualizations, create online data editors, and do much more.

GeoServer is a complete and powerful type of server software that can publish data to a web mapping application. In recent releases, support for geoprocessing operations has been added, which lets you use GeoServer as a data processor.

Since the beginning, GeoServer has support to standards from Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), which is kept compatible with its recent most relevant releases (for more information on OGC, have a look at http://www.opengeospatial.org).

This book will guide you through the details of configuring data for publication, creating geoprocessing tasks, and optimizing your server for optimal performance.