computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computer, computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and the development of both computer hardware, hardware and softw ...

, GeoServer is an

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

server written in

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

that allows users to share, process and edit

geospatial data Geographic data and information is defined in the ISO/TC 211 series of standards as data and information having an implicit or explicit association with a location relative to Earth (a geographic location or geographic position). It is also cal ...

. Designed for interoperability, it publishes data from any major spatial data source using

open standard An open standard is a standard that is openly accessible and usable by anyone. It is also a common prerequisite that open standards use an open license that provides for extensibility. Typically, anybody can participate in their development due to ...

s. GeoServer has evolved to become an easy method of connecting existing information to

virtual globe A virtual globe is a 3D computer graphics, three-dimensional (3D) software model or representation of Earth or another world. A virtual globe provides the user with the ability to freely move around in the virtual environment by changing the vie ...

s such as

Google Earth Google Earth is a web mapping, web and computer program created by Google that renders a 3D computer graphics, 3D representation of Earth based primarily on satellite imagery. The program maps the Earth by superimposition, superimposing satelli ...

and

NASA World Wind NASA WorldWind is an open-source (released under the NOSA license and the Apache 2.0 license) virtual globe. According to the website, "WorldWind is an open source virtual globe API. WorldWind allows developers to quickly and easily c ...

as well as to web-based maps such as OpenLayers, Leaflet,

Google Maps Google Maps is a web mapping platform and consumer application offered by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° interactive panorama, interactive panoramic views of streets (Google Street View, Street View ...

and

Bing Maps Bing Maps (previously Live Search Maps, Windows Live Maps, Windows Live Local, and MSN Virtual Earth) is a web mapping service provided as a part of Microsoft's Bing suite of search engines and powered by the Bing Maps Platform framework which al ...

. GeoServer functions as the

reference implementation In the software development process, a reference implementation (or, less frequently, sample implementation or model implementation) is a program that implements all requirements from a corresponding specification. The reference implementation ...

of the

Open Geospatial Consortium The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is an international voluntary consensus standards organization that develops and maintains international standards for geospatial content and location-based services, sensor web, Internet of Things, Geographi ...

Web Feature Service In computing, the Open Geospatial Consortium Web Feature Service (WFS) Interface Standard provides an interface allowing requests for geographical features across the web using platform-independent calls. One can think of geographical features as ...

standard, and also implements the

Web Map Service A Web Map Service (WMS) is a standard protocol developed by the Open Geospatial Consortium in 1999 for serving georeferenced map images over the Internet. These images are typically produced by a map server from data provided by a GIS database ...

Web Coverage Service The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Coverage Service (WCS) Interface Standard defines a web-based interface for the retrieval of coverages—that is, digital geospatial information representing space/time-varying phenomena. By providing dire ...

and

Web Processing Service The OGC Web Processing Service (WPS) Interface Standard provides rules for standardizing inputs and outputs (requests and responses) for invoking geospatial processing services, such as polygon overlay, as a web service. The WPS standard defines h ...

specifications.

Goals

GeoServer aims to operate as a node within a free and open

Spatial Data Infrastructure A spatial data infrastructure (SDI), also called geospatial data infrastructure, is a data infrastructure implementing a framework of geographic data, metadata, users and tools that are interactively connected in order to use spatial data in an eff ...

. Just as the

Apache HTTP Server The Apache HTTP Server ( ) is a free and open-source software, free and open-source cross-platform web server, released under the terms of Apache License, Apache License 2.0. It is developed and maintained by a community of developers under the ...

has offered a free and open web server to publish

HTML Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...

, GeoServer aims to do the same for geospatial data.

Features

GeoServer reads a variety of data formats, including: *

PostGIS PostGIS ( ) is an open source software program that adds support for geographic objects to the PostgreSQL object-relational database. PostGIS follows the Simple Features for SQL specification from the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). PostGIS is ...

Oracle Spatial Oracle Spatial and Graph, formerly Oracle Spatial, is a free option component of the Oracle Database. The spatial features in Oracle Spatial and Graph aid users in managing geographic and location-data in a native type within an Oracle database, p ...

ArcSDE ArcSDE (Arc Spatial Database Engine) is a server-software sub-system (produced and marketed by Esri) that aims to enable the usage of relational database management systems for spatial data. The spatial data may then be used as part of a geodat ...

* IBM Db2 *

MySQL MySQL () is an Open-source software, open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A rel ...

MongoDB MongoDB is a source-available, cross-platform, document-oriented database program. Classified as a NoSQL database product, MongoDB uses JSON-like documents with optional database schema, schemas. Released in February 2009 by 10gen (now MongoDB ...

Apache Solr Solr (pronounced "solar") is an open-source enterprise-search platform, written in Java. Its major features include full-text search, hit highlighting, faceted search, real-time indexing, dynamic clustering, database integration, NoSQL features ...

Shapefile The shapefile format is a geospatial vector data format for geographic information system (GIS) software. It is developed and regulated by Esri as a mostly open specification for data interoperability among Esri and other GIS software product ...

s *

GeoTIFF GeoTIFF is a public domain metadata standard which allows georeferencing information to be embedded within a TIFF file. The potential additional information includes map projection, coordinate systems, ellipsoids, datums, and everything else nec ...

GTOPO30 GTOPO30 is a digital elevation model for the world, developed by United States Geological Survey (USGS). It has a 30-arc second resolution (approximately 1 km), and is split into 33 tiles stored in the USGS DEM file format. According to DTED ...

* ECW,

MrSID MrSID (pronounced Mister Sid) is an acronym that stands for ''multiresolution seamless image database''. It is a file format (filename extension ''.sid'') developed and patented by LizardTech (in October 2018 absorbed into Extensis) for encoding ...

JPEG2000 JPEG 2000 (JP2) is an image compression standard and coding system. It was developed from 1997 to 2000 by a Joint Photographic Experts Group committee chaired by Touradj Ebrahimi (later the JPEG president), with the intention of superseding their ...

Through standard protocols it produces

KML Keyhole Markup Language (KML) is an XML notation for expressing geographic annotation and visualization within two-dimensional maps and three-dimensional Earth browsers. KML was developed for use with Google Earth, which was originally named Key ...

, GML, Shapefile,

GeoRSS GeoRSS is a specification for encoding location as part of a Web feed. ''(Web feeds are used to describe feeds ("channels") of content, such as news articles, Audio blogs, video blogs and text blog entries. These web feeds are rendered by prog ...

PDF Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...

GeoJSON GeoJSON is an open standard format designed for representing simple geographical features, along with their non-spatial attributes. It is based on the JSON format. The features include points (therefore addresses and locations), line strings ...

JPEG JPEG ( , short for Joint Photographic Experts Group and sometimes retroactively referred to as JPEG 1) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degr ...

GIF The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; or , ) is a Raster graphics, bitmap Image file formats, image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released ...

, SVG, PNG and more. In addition, one can edit data via the WFS transactional profile (WFS-T). GeoServer includes an integrated OpenLayers client for previewing data layers. GeoServer additionally supports efficient publishing of geospatial data to

through the use of network links, using KML. Advanced features for Google Earth output include templates for customized pop-ups, time and height visualizations, and "super-overlays". GeoServer relies on

GeoTools GeoTools is a free software (LGPL) GIS toolkit for developing standards compliant solutions. It provides an implementation of Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) specifications as they are developed. GeoTools is a contributor to the GeoAPI, GeoAPI ...

, a

GIS A geographic information system (GIS) consists of integrated computer hardware and software that store, manage, analyze, edit, output, and visualize geographic data. Much of this often happens within a spatial database; however, this is not ...

library.

Usage

* MassGIS (Massachusetts state GIS) * MACRIS Maps (Massachusetts Historical Commission) *

TriMet The Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon (TriMet) is a Transit district, transit agency that serves most of the Oregon part of the Portland metropolitan area. Created in 1969 by the Oregon Legislative Assembly, Oregon legi ...

(Transit agency for Portland, Oregon) *

Ordnance Survey The Ordnance Survey (OS) is the national mapping agency for Great Britain. The agency's name indicates its original military purpose (see Artillery, ordnance and surveying), which was to map Scotland in the wake of the Jacobite rising of ...

(National Mapping Agency of the UK) *

Institut Géographique National An institute is an organizational body created for a certain purpose. They are often research organisations (research institutes) created to do research on specific topics, or can also be a professional body. In some countries, institutes ca ...

(National Mapping Agency of France) *

GBIF The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is an international organisation that focuses on making scientific data on biodiversity available via the Internet using web services. The data are provided by many institutions from around the ...

(Global Biodiversity Information Facility) *

World Bank The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and Grant (money), grants to the governments of Least developed countries, low- and Developing country, middle-income countries for the purposes of economic development ...

Global Earthquake Model The Global Earthquake Model (GEM) is a public–private partnership initiated in 2006 by the Global Science Forum of the OECD to develop global, open-source risk assessment software and tools. With committed backing from academia, governments and ...

* GMOS (Global Mercury Observation System) *

FAO The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations; . (FAO) is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations that leads international efforts to defeat hunger and improve nutrition ...

(Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) *

New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications The New York City Office of Technology and Innovation (OTI), formerly known as the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT), is the department of the government of New York City that oversees the City's "use of existing ...

* TeamSurv *

ITU The International Telecommunication Union (ITU)In the other common languages of the ITU: * * is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for many matters related to information and communication technologies. It was established ...

(International Telecommunication Union)

Architecture

GeoServer uses the

Spring Framework The Spring Framework is an application framework and inversion of control container for the Java platform. The framework's core features can be used by any Java application, but there are extensions for building web applications on top of the Ja ...

, providing a request dispatch architecture for modules implementing OGC services. The web administration application uses wicket, allowing extensions to contribute additional configuration screens. The application provides a REST API implemented using the spring-mvc-framework. GeoServer is a web application, supporting any common

servlet container A web container (also known as a servlet container; and compare "webcontainer" ) is the component of a web server that interacts with Jakarta Servlets. A web container is responsible for managing the lifecycle of servlets, mapping a URL to a pa ...

(a standalone distribution is available with the

Jetty (web server) Eclipse Jetty is a Java web server and Java Servlet container. While web servers are usually associated with serving documents to people, Jetty is now often used for machine to machine communications, usually within larger software frameworks. Je ...

as an embedded server). GeoWebCache, a Java-based caching component similar to TileCache, is bundled with GeoServer, but available separately. Similarly, GeoServer packages GeoTools as a Java library, but it is also available separately. GeoServer is a longstanding application and has undergone several architectural changes. GeoServer 1.0 was built around the STRUTS framework, with the migration to Spring and Wicket taking place for GeoServer 2.0. Early versions of the REST API used restlet before migration to spring-mvc-framework.

References

External links