So, welcome back to our talks. Now a second talk with Astrid, and she wants to present us the MapBender GeoPortal framework.

Hello, here at FrostCon, second day at FrostCon. I would like to talk to you about MapBender and how you can create web mapping applications, GeoPortal applications with the framework MapBender. My name is Astrid Emler, I'm from the MapBender team.

I'm working here in Bonn at the Wear Group. Wear Group is developing MapBender. The most of the code comes from Wear Group here, and my colleagues. I'm active in the first year's local chapter of the OSGU, the German language local chapter, and I'm OSGU charter member since 2010,

and involved in the OSGU project. I'm already also involved in the OSGU Live project, and I always do the job and put the actual MapBender version on OSGU Live to provide it for every new version. So, two slides about Wear Group and what we do.

We build up GeoPortal application with open source software. So we use a lot of the software of the OSGU stack, and we provide MapBender application. MapBender is a project of OSGU too. It's incubated in 2006 as a first OSGU project,

and here you can see different MapBender solutions where communes or cities provide their data through a GeoPortal framework. We have a project which is called Meldermarks,

where you can add ideas or problems to a map, and the information will go to the commune and they can react on it. We have a mobile maps offline client solution, which Anna will introduce later, and we have a metadata project,

which is a metadata editor for metadata, which are important for setting up inspire services. And we do consulting, training, we are providing solutions with OpenStreetMap and more. We are a company with more than 30 people

in Bonn, Berlin, and Freiburg. But let's start with a MapBender project. As we heard before, we had this famous OSGU code sprint in 2016, and here on this slide, you can see Andrei Oblivantsev.

He is architect and the main developer of the MapBender project, and we are involved in the OSGU community. We are involved in FOSGIS conference as well, so if you want to meet us at a conference, come to the next FOSGIS conference in Bonn next year,

and you can visit workshops about MapBender or presentations. And you can meet us at the FOSGIS hacking events in the Linux hotel and meet MapBender developer there. We also have presentations from the MapBender team at the TAB FAO portal,

so if you want to see videos or introductions about MapBender, you can have a look there. But now let's have a look at MapBender and what MapBender does and why it may be interesting for you. MapBender is a web GIS client suite with an administration web interface.

And the nice thing is that you can create your portal applications without writing a single line of code. So if you are not a programmer, it may be interesting for you to use MapBender because you can do everything with an administration interface

which you can use in the browser. You can create and maintain an OWS repository. It's a repository for your services. We handle WMS services. And you can distribute and configure services

among applications. So you can create one or many application and in every application you can decide which service you want to publish. You can create users and groups and give the users and groups access to your applications and services.

So we have three components. We have applications, services, and roles. So let's see how MapBender looks like. This is a demo application. If you install MapBender, we already provide demo applications that are ready to use.

This is a desktop application that you, not a desktop application, but it's an application that you can use on the desktop. We have a mobile application as well that you can use. And you can copy it and configure it, change it a bit, and then take it for your needs.

If you want to get to know more about MapBender, the easiest way is to have a look at our gallery on the website of MapBender. We have a gallery where some or many solutions are provided here and you can see how different MapBender can be configured.

One application that is referred in the gallery is Rio. It's called Raum information system from Oberberger Schakreis, which is close to Bonn. And they use MapBender since a long time already,

and they have different applications for different needs. As you can see here, for culture and tourismos, or for gesundheit sociales and flege, so for health or for child and family, you have different applications with different information.

This is how the application looks from Oberberger Schakreis. So you see they have a very nice design, they have an overview map, they have a navigation scale bar, they have a layer tree where you can choose different information, and you have a toolbar at the top

and a footer at the bottom where you can place elements. And the nice thing is that every application that you set up, you can configure it individually. It's like a toolbox that we give to you, and you can drag and drop the elements to the region that you want to have them.

You have a scale selector, like you can see here. You can change the projection, if you want to provide many projections in your application. You can provide many services in your application. The services, they bring along a legend, so you can show the legend of the services.

And the services, you also have a context menu, so you could change the opacity of the service or get information about the service, or drag and drop it in the tree so you can put it to a different position.

Then you have a redlining functionality where you can draw lines or polygons or text, which you can see here in red. And this information you could print or make an image export and give it to maybe interested to your colleagues or so.

This is only a temporary drawing that you can do. And if you want permanent information, want to provide permanent information, you could take the digitizer element, which I will show you later, to generate data. You can load WMS services.

A WMS service is referred by an address, which is a GAP capabilities address. And if you have a service which is not included in the portal already, you can load it afterwards and just use it in this session.

Here you can see that you have a layer tree and you have different buttons where you could switch to different functionalities and the side pane we call it. And here you can see that we have a distance measurement tool element that you can use

or you could use area measure tool. We have a print functionality that you can use. You can create your own print templates for different sizes that you want to print.

And you can configure the form that you want to display. You can configure the form individually and define the scales that you want to provide or define whether you want a title, column or not, or maybe a comment field or whether the print can be rotated.

And then you get a PDF that is printed. It could look like this with a legend in this case and with permanent information, but also with dynamic information like the scale or the date and the legend.

You could provide a print that can be rotated. And here you see the rotated result. And this is how a template could look like. It's an OpenOffice Draw template and a PDF that you have to provide and you can configure them as you want

and then use them in MapBender. So let's have a look how an application can be set up. Not everyone can set up an application. First you have to log in to MapBender. You have this login area and after login you have more functionality

that you can use. And you can see that at the button at that application you have more buttons that you can use. You could copy an application or edit an application or delete an application. And first thing is that we want to make a new application. So in the tree here you can choose new application

and create a new application which is empty at the beginning. After you created the application you want to add functionality through the application so you can add elements to this application.

The first element that you may want to add is the map element to provide a map where you can see your data. So you could add the map element and you see every element is individual. So it has some select boxes or some input fields where you have to provide information.

For the map element you have to define the projection, you have to define the extent, you have to define the scales that you want to provide and after you save the map element it is part of your content region.

We saw in the applications that we have different regions. We have the tool bar, the side pane at the side, the content where the map is and the footer and to all these regions you could add elements. As you see it is a bit a long process if you would add every element on your own

so this is why we provide the demo application where everything is already included and maybe you can delete some of the functionality that you don't want. But if you start from scratch you have only the map element and if you have a look at your application it will be empty because you didn't say the application

which service should be shown. So the next step is to add a source to load a WMS service with the get capabilities. You can load it to your repository. MapBender knows after loading a service all the information out of the get capabilities XML.

MapBender gets information about the service and knows which layers are offered by the service, which extent is offered, which projections are supported. And then you can go back to your application and add the service to your application.

First you have to create a layer set that's like a collection where you say okay in the main map I would like to put these WMS in the main map, maybe for the overview. You make an own layer set and like this you can structure your services.

After you created the layer set you can add a service to this layer set and you can configure the service. You can say okay this WMS should be activated on start or only one layer should be activated or it should have a transparency.

You can define which image format to use or which information format. So here you have different possibilities where you can decide how the service should be published in the application. And like this you could add many services to your application and would get a map like this.

One thing I didn't show you is how to add the overview map. So when I showed you the slides we only had the map element. But there's a second element in the map which you can see at the bottom that's the overview element which was integrated too.

So let's have a look how the user management is done. You can create new users and can create new groups. So you have to provide a name and email address and choose a password. You can provide more information in this profile form and then you could create a group

and add the new user to this group. If you want your application not to be public you could give the access only to some people. Normally, or you have a public,

you can provide an application for the public. So no log in is needed. And this is done by is authenticated anonymously. As you can see here in the list at the bottom there is this is authenticated anonymously. And that says that everyone can view this application.

But if you in this case only want maybe Astrodame to get access to the application you should delete this is authenticated anonymously and just provide it for the users that you want or for the group that you would like to give access to the application.

That's how it works to ship applications to users and groups. Now I have some slides where I will show some more functionality. So we can provide an image export. So the map that you can see will be exported

to a PNG or JPEG file. We have a PoE function, a meeting point function where you can click in the map, provide a text and then a link will be generated. And this link can be opened in a browser. You can send this link via email to a colleague

and then when the person opens MapBender it will start at this position. Here you can see an application where you get information about land use catastrophe. So there are many plans here in Goethe's law

where you can see which land use plan for the regions is active. And you can use the gazette here.

It's an SQL search on a PostgreSQL database where you can navigate to your home and choose your house number and navigate to your place. And then you can get, this is how the search router is configured.

We have YAML configuration for some elements. So like this you could configure the form of this search that you just saw. You can configure the part for the fields that you want to invent and then you can configure how the results should be displayed.

And on the other side you have a solar search that you can choose. There's an element that we provide where you can refer to a solar search service. And this is very fast. So in this case you could search for the bounce plan or maybe for an address or for parcels

and then the results will show up very fast. Here you can see a solar search in action at Mitropolu Ruhr. And in Mitropolu Ruhr you have another element which is used, it's called Baysource switcher.

You can provide buttons or a drop-down list which refer to services. So maybe if you don't want this layer tree element that we saw before with all the layers that you have to switch on and off, maybe it's easier to have this switcher to change in this case different auto photos

from different generations. Back to the land use plans. Here's an example from Geoporta Lippe. They handle also these land use plans that we saw before in Goethe-Slo. They have information about the regions

and you can say planzeichenungladen which will add another service to your application. So for the region that you are interested in you can add more information to your application. Back to Goethe-Slo, they have another nice feature.

They have regions where discussions are going on about these land use plans. So they have these WMC functionality integrated where you can save different configurations or different areas

where you can configure the information and then with this drop-down list you can jump to one or the other configuration and region. And so it's easy for the people to come to the place where the discussion is going on. So we have this WMC editor where you can configure

the areas that you want to save. You can load them via this dialogue or load them in the select box as we saw before. Here is Stadtbahn Trosthof which is close to St. Augustine

where you can see a thematic layer tree which has one more category that you can define. We saw these layer sets and you can define layer sets and gather services and group them into different layer sets. You can style your application with an HTML element

so you can easily add images or links or descriptions in press or more so via HTML because in this HTML element you can easily write HTML text and then it will be added to your application.

Mapender will show up in different designs. You can use a black design from our demo applications but normally you would like to use your corporate design and this can be done via over defining CSS style. The concept is that you override the CSS style

that Mapender brings with them self and you override it with your own CSS configuration. We have a mobile template as well. So after installation you can use this mobile template and provide your own services in the mobile template.

We have a digitizer where you can edit data and create data. Here you can see a tree cadastra which has a very complex form. The tree is only a point but the information that belongs to the tree is very complex.

The digitizer is configured via YAML as well so you can define how the table should look like with where you can make the selection for the object. You have different geometry types that are supported.

You have different functionality for each geometry type that you can use. Every element that you can use in Mapender is described in the Mapender documentation that's a link to the Mapender documentation.

And if we have a look behind the screen you see here which components Mapender is made of. We have our MIT license, we use the Symphony 2 PHP framework which brings a lot of modules that we can use from scratch, we don't have to do it on our own.

We use OpenLayers as a map client. At the moment we use OpenLayers 2 but we are discussing and doing our first steps with integrating OpenLayers 4. We use MapQuery, jQuery and you need a database where you can store all the information

that you configure in the administration backend and here you have different possibilities that you can use. At the moment we have the 3.63 version that is the actual version. I don't want to go into detail about all these points.

We are working, or you have this 3.061 version on OSTIO Live so if you want to try Mapender out you can download OSTIO Live 11 which is an actual version and Mapender will be part of OSTIO Live and you can use it without problem.

We have Mapender on MS4W as well. That's a project which is called Map Server for Windows and you can download Map Server for Windows which will integrate Map Server, Apache, PHP

and more projects and one of the projects that you can use there is Mapender. We have a Docker image for Mapender. This is provided by Arne who is here as well so you could ask the Docker image if you would like to

and here you have a slide where you can see who is involved. So there are many people also work group team who are running the Mapender project. Axel Schaeffer, our colleague is a new chair since a few months. Then Andrei Oblivantsev you saw already. He is the architect and we have a project steering committee

which meets in regular sequences and discuss about Mapender. So we have activities in the team,

we have regular meetings, we have face to face meetings as we are all working in Bonn. We are talking in German so in the incubation process of the OSGEO project it says you should have an open discussion in English and people should get involved. So we have to work on this maybe a bit more

and be more transparent. We have the code on GitHub and we have a ticket system there so if you find bugs or have suggestions you can provide them there. We have many developers, many users, we have a mailing list where you can get in touch with us. And we want to work on re-incubation.

As you saw sometimes on the slides I said Mapender or Mapender 3. So Mapender 3 was a redevelopment of the map on the project where we integrated Symphony and OpenLayers 2 and we didn't make a check whether we still follow all the OSGEO rules

so maybe it would be worse to have another look and make a re-incubation. If you want to have a look on the map we have a user reference map where you can see a Mapender users worldwide and you could add your location if you are using Mapender.

And we are working on the next version. It's version 307 that we are working on. This will be a feature release. It will come soon in the next months and there will be improvements in translations because we had a translation sprint at the last Phospho-G conference.

We want to support OTF Grids. So you can have tool tips when you go over POEs for example, there will be a tool tip that can appear. We want to support LDAP in that version directly via Symphony. Ask Arne again.

And there are many improvements for the digitizer and some more elements and functionality will come. So one is editing data without geometry. The query builder is a new project that was re-invented. We have a tool where you can pick and click,

a pick on click or a zoom to a coordinate which is a nice functionality. And we started already with OpenLayers 4 support.

So we want to add a new map element or work on all the elements to support OpenLayers 4. We want to adopt or write existing elements. So they will support the new OpenLayers version. Maybe, yeah, one thing we want to make sure

is that MapBender will be always updatable. So if we do this big step, your applications should still work. And then there's the projects. We will hear about offline clients in the next presentation

and there's a project where you can export information and data from a MapBender client and then download it and use it in the offline client. So here you get an impression who the MapBender developers are.

There's a picture from our company at Wear Group with the MapBender developers. There are pictures from the code sprint. So if you are interested and would like to get involved, you are welcome. If you want to try MapBender without installation, you can do it on our demos. And thanks for listening.

Yeah, thank you for your talk. My typical question, are there any further questions? So yeah, it's a very nice tool. I really love it. I have used, I think, MapBender in some 10 to 15,

I mean, not used as in I didn't install it, but I've seen them in many government places. I'm sure that is MapBender. I can recognize it from your screenshots. But I have a question or observation. Why are the projects looking so old? Like they come from the 90s or something?

You thought that the projects that I showed are looking so old. Not even that. Even the other projects, most of them. But I can see that the stack is MapBender behind. But most of them are old. Maybe it's because they use older WMS or something like that.

You have to make a difference whether the map looks old or the framework looks old. The framework also looks old. But I'm not talking about the framework. You're talking about the maps and they look old. Yeah, okay. So this is independent of MapBender. So it's a question of the provider of the services,

how they are styled their maps. Maybe they should improve it. Like do you offer anything like default OSM or for example, we also have this OpenStreetMap Germany, which has more clearer. The MapNIC style you are talking about. Do you offer any defaults like on the default map,

just you give OSM as the default? No, we have in the demo application, we have an OSM service as well. This is MapNIC OSM service, but it's not up to date because we only provided to have some data

in the demo applications. But as a service from work group we provide to create for you an OSM MapNIC WMS if you would like to get that service. Okay, and the second one was also about the framework.

It also looks old. You can see that you are using open layers. You haven't used leaflet. Maybe you have your own reasons probably for that. At the moment we use OpenLayers 2. Which is more older. More old, yeah, yeah, since many years.

OpenLayers 3 and now 4 is on the board. Because most of your maps, when you try to open them on a mobile phone, I don't know how they look. I'm pretty sure they don't look good. Especially the portal ones. When you try to open this portal. The portal ones, they don't look good on a mobile phone.

They are not usable on a mobile phone. They are not responsive yet. So we should work on a responsive design. At the moment you have to define an application for the desktop or for using on mobile devices. But yeah, there are many tasks that we should work on.

Like more modern. 90% of the users right now are using mobiles. And especially the city services are all coupled. If they don't offer proper mobiles. Yes, yes, that's true. I think it's a huge usability issue. Maybe it could be improved by OpenLayers 4, I think.

I'm not sure. Does it have support? Does OpenLayers 4 have better support for mobiles? Yeah. And we have to work on this responsive design because it's the elements that you saw that build up an application.

They should work different on a desktop application or on mobile. And it should be possible to use one application for different use cases. And not to create two applications. One for desktop, one for mobile. Overall the web stack should be, I think, overhauled.

I don't know. Probably rewritten for mobile. I'm not sure. It's your plan and how you guys do it. But probably mobile centric should be the new way. Yeah, that's sure. We should put more focus on that.

You're right. Because no one uses mobile these days. I haven't seen many people using laptops or something. Maybe many of the applications are used within the commune or within the geo portal of the city. So it's more for internal uses. But if you want to make a city map or so

which would be used from everyone, then for sure you should provide a mobile solution as well. So it's a good suggestion and we should work on that. And that's what probably the next talk will really work. Yeah, that's true. Okay.

There's another question. I think you've kind of answered it already, but I'm still going to ask. Is the microphone on? Yes, I think it is. Okay, sorry. MapMender creates a complete portal, a complete application. So if I have my own application

or some kind of JavaScript framework application and I would like to embed some mapping functionality, MapMender wouldn't be the right tool to use. If you need only a small map, maybe you should do it directly with an open layers

or a leaflet client that you integrate. It's easy to integrate, but if you want this service repository and maybe a big application, then MapMender and user management and group management, then maybe MapMender may be your choice. Mm-hmm. And to what kind of size of user base

would MapMender scale? So you said it's mainly for internal use, so you would have a user base of maybe two digit numbers of users. So if you really went on the web and had 20,000 users access MapMender,

how far could you scale? I don't know the answer, but we have big portals, like from the Geoportal Rheinand files or Geoportal Hessen. They have many thousand users, but I don't know the exact number,

but it should be scalable. Okay. Maybe I can give a short answer to that. We have already created the LDAP integration, and with the LDAP integration, it's quite easy to add something like 30,000 users.

We already make something like that, because you just have to evaluate if somebody is allowed to take a look at some sources. So it's, but I think it's much better to do something like that over something like LDAP, not over the internal user,

administration, but it should also be possible. I haven't tested how much user you really can add, and it still works fine, but I don't think that there should be a problem

when you don't make it with LDAP and make it with the internal user administration. I was more thinking about concurrent access. So if you have 30,000 people accessing MapBender at the same time, how far can you scale?

Sure, do you know? I don't really know, but we have big portals that are running with thousands of concurrent access. And the question,

because the map normally isn't created by MapBender, it's from the WMS server or something like that, so you have to look at your WMS server more than... For example, if they are all using one base layer,

let's say the base layer is coming from OpenStreetMap or some other small project, if that server is being hit by, let's say, one million requests, maybe that server will crash, and overall this MapBender might not show a proper map on the background because that server has crashed.

Since these guys are just displaying some of the JavaScript elements and probably a little bit of layers, I think it can easily scale if the servers are good. Maybe 10,000 to probably one million should be basic. I guess, I'm not sure. But you are also able to do something

like lock balancing with this framework. It's no problem, especially as long as you don't use a spatial light database file. Any other further questions here?

Okay, so thank you for your talk.