MapGuide Open Source is a web-based map-making platform that enables users to quickly develop and deploy web mapping applications and geospatial web services. The application was introduced as

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 ...

Autodesk Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational software corporation that provides software products and services for the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media, education, and entertainment industries. Autodesk is headquarte ...

in November 2005, and the code was contributed to the Open Source Geospatial Foundation in March 2006 under the GNU LGPL. MapGuide features an interactive viewer that includes support for feature selection, property inspection, map tips, and operations such as buffer, select within, and measure. MapGuide includes an

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...

database for storing and managing content, and supports most common geospatial file formats, databases, and standards. The MapGuide platform can be deployed on

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

, supports

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and IIS web servers, and offers extensive PHP,

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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 ...

, and

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

APIs for application development.

History

MapGuide was first introduced as Argus MapGuide in 1995 by Argus Technologies in

Calgary Calgary () is a major city in the Canadian province of Alberta. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806 making it the third-largest city and fifth-largest metropolitan area in C ...

Alberta Alberta is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Canada. It is a part of Western Canada and is one of the three Canadian Prairies, prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to its west, Saskatchewan to its east, t ...

. In the fall of 1996, Autodesk acquired Argus Technologies and within a few months the first release under the Autodesk brand was introduced, Autodesk MapGuide 2.0. The software progressed through a number of releases leading up to the current Autodesk MapGuide 6.5. To this day MapGuide 6.5 and previous releases are known for ease of deployment, rapid application development, data connectivity, scalability, and overall performance. Despite its success, the MapGuide 6.5 architecture has some inherent limitations. To this day most MapGuide applications rely upon a client Plug-in, ActiveX Control, or

Java applet Java applets were applet, small applications written in the Java (programming language), Java programming language, or another programming language that Compiled language, compiles to Java bytecode, and delivered to users in the form of Ja ...

with much of the application logic written in

using the APIs offered by the client-side plug-in. All spatial analysis is performed client-side on rendered graphics rather than on the underlying spatial data. And finally the server platform is very Windows-centric. In spring 2004 a team of developers at Autodesk began work on what is now MapGuide Open Source. Their goals were to retain all of the best aspects of MapGuide 6.5 while also meeting the goals set out above. The project was then submitted to the Open Source Geospatial Foundation in March 2006 under the LGPL license.

References

External links

* Autodesk Free GIS software Formerly proprietary software {{cartography-stub

History

See also

References

External links