MapGuide Open Source: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 04:45, 2 March 2008

Revision as of 05:00, 2 March 2008

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'''MapGuide Open Source''' is a web-based [[Cartography|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]] by [[Autodesk]] in November 2005, and isthe presentlycode hostedwas withcontributed to the [[Open Source Geospatial Foundation]] in March 2006 under the [[GNU Lesser General Public License|GNU LGPL]]. The current version is 2.0, released [[February 29]], [[2008]].

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]] database for storing and managing content, and supports most common geospatial file formats, databases, and standards. The MapGuide platform can be deployed on [[Linux]] or [[Microsoft Windows]], supports [[Apache HTTP Server|Apache]] and [[Internet Information Services|IIS]] web servers, and offers extensive [[PHP]], [[.NET Framework|.NET]], [[Java (programming language)|Java]], and [[JavaScript]] [[Application programming interface|APIs]] for application development.

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MapGuide was first introduced as Argus MapGuide in 1995 by Argus Technologies in [[Calgary]], [[Alberta]]. 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 Appletapplet]] with much of the application logic written in [[JavaScript]] 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 the spring of 2004 a dedicated team of developers at Autodesk began work on what is now MapGuide Open Source. OurTheir goals were simple,to retain all of the best aspects of MapGuide 6.5 while also meeting the goals set out above. The resultproject iswas MapGuide Open Source. Autodesk released MapGuide Open Source under the LGPL in November 2005, and contributed thethen codesubmitted to the [[Open Source Geospatial Foundation]] in March 2006 under the LGPL license.

==External links==