State of Bridge for QGIS
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| License | CC Attribution 3.0 Unported: You are free to use, adapt and copy, distribute and transmit the work or content in adapted or unchanged form for any legal purpose as long as the work is attributed to the author in the manner specified by the author or licensor. | |
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| Production Year | 2022 |
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00:00
Bridging (networking)State of matterBridging (networking)Online helpRevision controlBitGoodness of fitLevel (video gaming)Computer animation
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Bridging (networking)Table (information)BitBridging (networking)Content (media)Moment (mathematics)Computer animation
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Plug-in (computing)Variety (linguistics)Bridging (networking)Open sourceLibrary (computing)Data conversionEnterprise architectureSoftware maintenanceMetadataOnline-PublizierenDirected setFile Transfer ProtocolDirectory serviceBitServer (computing)Level (video gaming)Bridging (networking)Variety (linguistics)DatabaseRaster graphicsRevision controlSoftware maintenancePlug-in (computing)Open sourceMetadataClassical physicsSoftwareFile Transfer ProtocolLibrary (computing)Software frameworkNetwork operating systemCASE <Informatik>TesselationGeometryMereologyRow (database)Data managementData storage deviceMiniDiscComputer fileComputer configurationShape (magazine)Source codeOcean currentEnterprise architectureComputer animation
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Bridging (networking)Shape (magazine)Attribute grammarTexture mappingDirected setLocal GroupVector spaceCodeServer (computing)Table (information)Plug-in (computing)MappingCuboidLevel (video gaming)GeometryRight angleTesselationMultiplication signBridging (networking)DivisorAttribute grammarDatabaseSoftware bugDirection (geometry)Stability theoryResultantLibrary (computing)RoutingSubsetComputer fileShape (magazine)Group actionComputer animation
08:34
Bridging (networking)Proxy serverTable (information)Content (media)AuthenticationComputer configurationContext awarenessMenu (computing)User interfaceModal logicBridging (networking)State of matterMathematicsInterface (computing)WindowServer (computing)Latent heatContext awarenessContent (media)Right angleSet (mathematics)Level (video gaming)Transformation (genetics)GeometryConfiguration spaceView (database)Computer configurationLibrary catalogCASE <Informatik>MetadataConnected spaceUser interfaceAddress spaceProjective planeOpen setTable (information)PlanningRow (database)MereologyBitAuthenticationCommunications protocolProxy serverGroup actionQuaternion groupData storage deviceLibrary (computing)Service (economics)QuicksortSoftwareComplete metric spaceWebsiteComputer animation
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Degree (graph theory)State of matterBridging (networking)Transformation (genetics)MetadataView (database)Electric currentLibrary catalogLocal GroupServer (computing)Computer fileRandom matrixLink (knot theory)Template (C++)Computer configurationCASE <Informatik>Table (information)Projective planeConnected spaceData storage deviceDirection (geometry)Computer animation
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BitSet (mathematics)Server (computing)Bridging (networking)AuthenticationPresentation of a groupInstance (computer science)GeometryElectronic mailing listData conversionProcess (computing)Mechanism designGoodness of fitFormal languageVector potentialMetadataComputer animation
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Bridging (networking)Source codePlug-in (computing)Different (Kate Ryan album)Functional (mathematics)Default (computer science)Level (video gaming)InternetworkingServer (computing)Data conversionContext awarenessInstance (computer science)Bridging (networking)File formatComputer fileBitQuicksortMereologyComputer configurationMenu (computing)Process (computing)Enterprise architectureSoftwareProduct (business)Online helpConnected spaceParity (mathematics)Library (computing)GeometryFeedbackOnlinecommunitySinc functionVideo gameFile viewerCuboidRight angleService (economics)Cartesian coordinate systemRevision controlLine (geometry)Projective planeMultiplication signPower (physics)Quantum gravityDecision theoryXMLComputer animation
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:01
So welcome everyone to my talk about the bridge and it will be mainly about QGIS But I will also talk a bit about the upcoming ArcGIS Pro version just briefly And also a bit about ArcMap bridge that we also have so as Enoch already told
00:21
My name is Sander. I work at Geocat since a year or two I I'm on the bridge team I'm actually the bridge team But you know I'm also getting help now So that's nice. The team is actually growing. It's good
00:43
So let's start I have this is my table of what's so the table of contents, so it's first I'm gonna Speak a bit about what bridge is because I'm not aware if everyone is familiar with what bridge is and what it does
01:01
Then I'm going to talk about what has been during the past year. So from the last phosphor G to now And What we are currently developing so what's next and I would also like to Pick your brains a bit at least if there are any users in the room
01:22
About what you think that is missing in in bridge at the moment So let's start with what bridge is Bridge is a is a Python plugin for for QGIS so you can now download it through the plugin manager and QGIS
01:41
so it's effectively the the open source counterpart of Bridge for our GIS that already has a long history at Geocat Currently yeah, it's almost exclusively developed By Geocat so by us, so I mean it is an open source
02:02
thing but No one is really contributing. That's always a that saddens me a bit, but I hope that's going to change in the future So historically Because we already had other bridge versions for for our GIS We immediately started with four dot zero in QGIS
02:21
So that's always a bit confusing to people like what happened to three and two and those are actually non QGIS versions and Bridge uses a library called bridge tile That is a library that we also created and that More or less is a Python version of the geo styler
02:44
Library tool, I don't know it's it's like a whole framework almost That exists for node.js and we took out the parts that we need to convert from QML style into geo styler
03:00
But then a Python JSON version of the geo styler and then straight into SLD map file or Mapbox GL That's also what we support Bridge is available in two varieties. We have a community edition Enterprise Edition that is paid so that you pay us and we give you nice maintenance and support and so on and
03:26
I can help make new features and so on if that's desired Bridge can publish QGIS map layers To so that means the map layers or the geo data and the style the symbology to geo server
03:46
It can publish to file based data source So that means you have the option to publish shapefiles geo packages and rasters will be published as to a geotiff data store But it can also publish to post GIS
04:01
Databases if you have the credentials to do so directly you can do that That's the quickest and easiest way or you can also let the importer extension by geo server Handle your import for you if you don't have access to post GIS You can also publish to map server
04:22
But because map server does not have a rest API that is still done through classic FTP upload Then one of the Features that bridge also has is that it can publish metadata from your QGIS layer
04:41
to do network in this case, so it converts the The QGIS metadata to an ISO 139 compliant record and it then pushes that to geo network You can also do offline and online publishing so you can also publish to your disk create
05:01
The data files and the style files and so on on disk and Do whatever you like with it run it locally or publish by hand or whatever So What did we do the last year we have Gone from four dot one which was still during the last phosphor G
05:23
If I'm not mistaken to four three now that which four three was released just only last week we did lots of minor bug fixes during the year, so we increased the stability and Most of the improvements focused on on geo server users so
05:42
One of the things we did for the four three release Which was also the result of the Bolsona code sprint actually, so we teamed up with the geo server people to create an improvement for the importer extension in geo server, so if you Importer can help you get data into post GIS
06:05
Via the geo server route so you're and that's what I meant with if you don't have direct access to post GIS You can do that through importer, but the problem was that if layers if you delete a layer in geo server Then importer does not have the rights to drop a table
06:25
In post GIS so if you would republish a couple of times you would end up with a lot of clutter in your Post GIS database lots of tables with the same name and a numeric suffix like two three four etc
06:42
So I said to the geo server guys like I want to Get that rid of that so that we actually can overwrite an existing table So that has been fixed now, so I'm really happy that that is possible now to actually overwrite existing tables in post GIS
07:03
We also fixed the shapefile SOD attribute mapping and also is related to importer so you can For importer only accept shapefiles unfortunately, so if you have locally geo package Then it has to convert them to shapefile Shortening the attribute names and that broke the style map sometimes or the mapping to the attribute value
07:27
So we fix that Then the Direct access publishing had some flaws that we prepared map Libra or map box factor tile publishing also and
07:42
Layer grouping was not working as I wanted it to so I changed that as well Also recently we added Mainly for the for the workshops that were done earlier this week We added a quick start tutorial for geo server people so that they can actually see how can I use bridge to publish?
08:05
Something quickly to geo server. How do I set it up? And Last year I said like we were going to move like completely to geo styler like the original geo styler, but
08:22
We haven't had Time to to do that yet, so it's still using bridge style our own library under the hood So that actually did not change So what's what's next? It's not really state of bridge anymore. It's more like the future of bridge
08:43
so We are now working on bridge 5 which I hope will still see the light before Christmas It features a complete interface user interface redesign, but don't be shocked you'll still find everything
09:03
and That means that now you have like a modal dialog So you have you have like a publish button on the toolbar it opens a dialog and you cannot use anything else In QGIS anymore you need to do something with that dialog before you are able to close it The new one will have a dockable window so you can just continue working you can have it open you can have it closed
09:25
You can publish anytime you like Then you can publish the entire map still from the toolbar so the published button you have now will really be a
09:41
One-click publish button, so you won't not get an interface anymore. You can actually use that button to directly publish the map And You can also publish individual layers Just by clicking right mouse button in the table of contents of QGIS so you can say I want to move this to Geo server, or you can drag and drop. I will show that later what I mean by that
10:06
Then some users would like extra authentication options So we're going to implement the OAuth 2 Open ID connect workflow We are also going to adopt the QGIS proxy settings
10:21
Currently they are ignored by bridge because we use the requests library So there's a workaround for it if you're interested I can talk to you about it but the plans are to To actually use the QGIS settings and adopt those
10:42
Yep so for geo server The workflow improvements are that we Did you can select a target workspace where you want to go? Where you want your data to go and that is that is new because currently You need to save your QGIS document first
11:01
And then you're able to publish and your workspace name will always be the same as your QGIS project name So we decided let's Have the ability to unlink that so that people can just say I want my data to go into this workspace Which also means that now? QGIS bridge
11:21
Will not allow you to to actually add layers to an existing workspace without Removing the entire workspace it always overwrites You have indicated like we don't like that. We would actually like to add a layer and keep everything inside the workspace as is so
11:41
We're going to do that. We're going to do incremental layer publishing and You will also be able to view what was published In your in the target workspace for geo network also, thanks to That's Byron Cochrane who did one of the first PRS to to to bridge. I was very happy
12:05
and I still need to merge it because it's for five but He has added some options for geo network so he could actually assign records to to a group And directly also to the to the current catalog
12:22
You could apply a metadata transformation on the geo network site so you can decide to which Protocol it should use So I What it will look like this is still subject to change so because we're still actively developing, but to give you an idea
12:48
That on the right is the is the doc panel. I was talking about So it will have a published context tab So on the in a bottom left you see the the current
13:01
dialogue that has a published tab and Always has a view of the table of contents, but the flattened view Which is always a bit confusing because you don't see the layer groups in there anymore So we decided let's not do that anymore. So you will just have your QGIS table of contents as is
13:21
Which makes more sense and you can publish directly from your table of content by dragging and dropping or? By doing the right mouse click from your from your layer Then let's see Yeah
13:41
So you can you can select there you have this sort of geo server Explorer so to say so you can select your target workspace there where it needs to go you can Also, see the layers appear in there when you publish so they they they will when when the publication is ready You can see them pop up there
14:02
and There up there you have the what I call the SDI context So you in bridge for you still need to select a data server and a metadata server separately Typically people want to keep that together I mean you either are not interested in publishing metadata at all or you want a specific
14:22
metadata server with your data server so then you Make like an orchestration you combine them into what I call this as the eye context So that's new With these buttons you can then add or remove or edit your
14:41
server context similar to the service tab in bridge for This so there you have the the SDI Context so when you when you press edit on the SI context you get this window like a sub dialogue so to say
15:02
Where you see the server configuration with the geo server tab and the metadata tab This in this case you see a geo server configuration you can just add the host address like you're used to in bridge for and We simplified the part about data stores because people indicated like data stores
15:24
There was always a bit confusing in bridge for you can see it here you can Whoops that was okay, that was too fast Can I go back Or will does it start again, and then just click click click click click click, okay? Yeah
15:57
Yeah, so I was trying to press this yeah
16:03
So there's this data store option, and it was not clear because people thought that the data would actually end up in this data store Which is not the case because it has a workspace prefix there So this is actually a data store template, and that's also what we changed here, so you specify
16:20
Take a template from this data store in this workspace So that we changed And you can directly Be careful again Use the post yes direct connect details in there if you if you have them you can also set that you need to reference your
16:41
existing tables, so if it sees that it already has in your QGIS project referenced a post yes table, then it will try to Make a link and not upload data to to post yes again So that's that was it
17:01
So now I would actually like to know from you. I was actually using bridge one person Okay, so what do you think I can do I can do a direct conversation with you So what is missing do you think in in bridge for the future?
17:21
Yeah, well or now, but at least Authentication so you're happy with that Oh off Thing I reported or or you're using some other authentication mechanism not nothing okay, okay, okay, or not even basic Okay Yeah, because we do support basic already after you can you can use that
17:45
Okay well then I'm yeah, maybe yeah, maybe maybe Future users potentially with us might also be interested in Giving it a shot like what do you like to see in such a tool is this?
18:02
What you expected from this presentation did you? Yeah Okay, yeah, I heard about it. Yeah. Yeah, sorry. I have to stop you and give you the mic
18:27
Yeah, sorry this is a bit off Yeah, that's correct yeah
18:48
Directly mm-hmm there is in the geo server now there is new Right right yeah So if you could also include you know support for
19:04
So otherwise you it defeats the purpose because you'd have to go to just over and mm-hmm complete the publishing process Yeah, yeah We also have some customers who are for instance in Canada So they have to deal with French and English like bilingual data sets so they have that issue, too, so
19:22
Yeah, that's definitely on our list of things that we want to improve. Yeah Can you? Do the style conversions independently of publishing?
19:52
Oh I'm sorry because of that the first part I did not yet
20:07
You can you can convert the styles yeah Making use of the bridge styler without going through the whole publishing Process yes, you can do that. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's still possible you can have well. We don't care
20:26
You can you can switch off that it's not publishing symbology so so that it just Pushes the data to geo server or you well. It was more the other way around whether you could say Okay, I don't want to use just I've just got some styles. Yeah. I've got bridge. I want some styles
20:43
I want to convert to SLD or map server How easy is it to do that in bridge without doing everything else Right, so I'm just cherry-picking really you know you've got a style converter in there, and if I wanted to use that without Using anything else is that possible. Yeah, so when you have the style already, that's what you mean
21:01
Yeah, I've got a style in QGIS. Yeah, I've got a project in QGIS, and I know that you know inside Bridge, there's this style converter. It's okay. I just want to convert some styles I don't need to do the geo server stuff right well You cannot well you can so you can do the offline publishing thing yeah, so then you can
21:22
Generate SLDs and so on so that would give me a file set locally yes Yeah, what you can also do is it's more like the the quick and dirty approach There's also a style viewer in bridge It's a bit hidden, but it's you find it in the in the bridge toolbar in the in the QGIS menu There's a style viewer, and we actually build it to like debug
21:44
But it then we thought it was actually quite handy to keep it so you can have that open it's also a dockable panel and Then you will see if you click on a layer Then it will generate on the fly as of the map box to your styler and so on in different tabs
22:02
So you can view them and copy paste them in Whatever you like yeah I have those who are also watching us, but after that yeah, we have questions from online so yeah He can go first
22:20
You haven't mentioned map server. What is the future in bridge? Map server that's correct. Well it also happens to be that we we as geocat We are a geo server and a geo network Company so we we don't do much with map server. I Gladly
22:41
Do all kinds of improvements for map server? but I have to get feedback from the community and I never get any well. I get some from from Paul Because he's a he's a map server user The power of a conductor that says it's our former employer, but he works now at Israel
23:01
And he they are using it, so that's helpful But I would yeah I would really like some some help also from the developing community to make some VR's and improve the map server workflow Especially on the style convergence. I'll decide for to map file. There's some work to be done. Yeah
23:22
Okay, so It says is the functionality of the arc versions Broadly in line with the QG's versions Yes, so the the reason why we are doing this this bridge 5 or QG's is is to closely follow What we're also building in ArcGIS Pro bridge
23:44
So that will have a similar Similar workflow with a dockable panel on the right where you can configure your SDI context and so on yeah And is there any difference between the enterprise edition and the community edition?
24:01
Enterprise QG's it's a function functionality wise they are nothing is limited or something they have the the same functionality The only thing is that we as geocat we also to our customers We have a product for left that's called geocat live so that's a fully hosted solution with you network and you server combined and
24:22
The enterprise edition features a connection option for geocat life, but since community users will Not be enterprise users, so they will never use geocat life. We remove the geocat live connection for Community users, that's the only difference
24:43
Yeah, we still have some time for some questions Yeah, of course and also the support and yeah But that I already explained Yeah, okay. I just wanted to quickly clarify this
25:02
SLD Converter in Coogee's that the default one is different than yours Or the same how do you convert from Coogee's styles to SLD? So yeah as I mentioned we use this The Style library there. Yeah, so that converts to juicer a styler as some sort of intermediary format
25:26
And then from geostyler to SLD so it's different than this. It's it's different Yeah, yeah, and in in ways, it's better in other ways. It's yeah There's always differences in it
25:40
Coogee's default also. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Great. Thank you I have two questions for you now to yes, they have time. Yeah, very quickly. First one is Yeah, is it what is the feature parity with the ArcGIS product is more or less in ArcGIS
26:03
product the other Question is in the previous talks you guys have there was a lot of excitement going with the geostyler But it seems it died away. So just as a community want to know why or what happened well
26:20
We are still excited about it that the the main problem with geostyler is is that it's a node application and QGIS is a desktop application. So we either need to actually leverage geostyler fully and also
26:40
Utilize it so that we don't have any Conversion workflow to support anymore. I mean, I would love that the trouble is that I either need to use run a Node.js server locally or We as you can we need to create some kind of online conversion service that
27:01
bridge can access and That is still something that we are Thinking about of doing so that you for instance at least have the option to choose bridge style if you don't have internet access or something Or that you can choose the online converter and that will use geostyler. That's that's something that we're thinking of. So
27:25
yeah, I was I'm still very enthusiastic about geostyler too, but It's it's it's hard to fit it in Okay
27:40
then Thank you very much and See you in the next one