gvSIG CE and Sextante workshop at the 2012 WAURISA Conference

karstenvennemann — Fri, 04 May 2012 00:46:21 +0000

Introduction to gvSIG CE and geo-processing with SEXTANTE

Terra GIS is offering a 4 hours introductory class/hands on workshop about gvSIG CE desktop GIS and Sextante at the WAURISA Conference in Tacoma on Monday May 7th, 2012, 1pm - 5pm.

gvSIG is a powerful desktop GIS system that is known for having a user-friendly interface, being able to access the most common data formats, both vector and raster ones. It features a wide range of tools for working with geographic information (query tools, layout creation, geo-processing, networks, model builder, etc.) and provides excellent cartography and spatial analysis tools, and a wide range of spatial database connectivity. gvSIG CE is the open and international version that has many extensions such Sextante (raster and vector analysis), Raster and Remote sensing, and Network analysis natively integrated.

Preparations and downloads for workshops participants:
Prior to the workshop please download and copy to your system the gvSIG CE software and the workshop data using the links below. Note that Java is needed to run gvSIG and Sextante and is included in the gvSIG CE download for Linux and Windows, but is a separate download for some Mac operating systems .

gvSIG CE

workshop data (zipped file, unzip to your hard drive)

Update Monday May 7th:

workshop slides (PDF)

Picture from the workshop at WAURISA:

More information: Please contact us via email or call 206 905 1711 if you have additional questions

Sextante everywhere

karstenvennemann — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 21:24:58 +0000

After the geo-processing library Sextante was made available for gvSIG, gvSIG CE, and for ArcGIS, a plugin for QGIS was released by Victor Olaya in cooperation with the QGIS community. Now the Sextante toolbox truly has the potential to become the most comprehensive and widely used GIS geo-processing tool that runs on almost any software platform and in almost any GIS software . Congratulations Victor and QGIS community !

For the plugin a rewrite of Sextante algorithms in python is being developed and will take some time to be completed. Currently the Sextante toolbox in QGIS provides access to Grass, Gdal, LASTtools, Sextante Modeler, OTB tools, R, SAGA, fTools and mmqgis. Lots more to come in the next months !

SpatialKit and SEXTANTE for ArcGIS Desktop

karstenvennemann — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 23:25:11 +0000

In today’s presentation at King County GIS Center User Group meeting (Seattle, WA, USA) I talked about two powerful free & Open source extensions for ArcGIS. Both of them were released in late 2011: SpatialKit for ArcMap and SEXTANTE for ArcGIS. These extensions offer functionality that is not available at the ArcView level to ArcGIS license owners. This talk will present the extensions and demonstrate many of their tools.

SpatialKit for ArcMap enables users to use PostGIS data directly in ArcGIS. This means that ArcGIS users can employ the power of the first-class, open source spatial database PostGIS in the same way they use proprietary databases to store, edit and retrieve spatial features via ArcSDE. SpatialKit for ArcMap does not require ArcSDE, ArcInfo, the new Spatial Data Server (SDS) technology, or ArcGIS server.

SEXTANTE is a spatial data analysis library written in Java. The SEXTANTE for ArcGIS extension makes it possible to use SEXTANTE (and SAGA GIS) tools directly in ArcGIS, including Model Builder. Together SEXTANTE and SAGA comprise hundreds of spatial analysis functions, including many that are otherwise available in ArcGIS only through proprietary extensions that require additional licenses, such as Spatial Analyst.

gvSIG CE was presented as a powerful Desktop GIS and at the same time a great alternative to use Sextante integrated with the Grass, and Saga GIS algorithms (Grass algorithms are not available for the ArcGIS extensions at the time of writing). In the near future a version of Sextante will be released that in addition integrates the use of R (Statistical package) algorithms from within Sextante.

downloads
presentation slides (PDF)
zip archive with the 2 extension software packages , documentation and all (45 MB)

external links
Spatial Kit for ArcMap
SEXTANTE
SEXTANTE for ArcGIS
gvSIG CE

Micuenca project workshop - San Salvador

karstenvennemann — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 01:14:15 +0000

Terra GIS and Catholic Relief Services (CRS San Salvador office) joint forces for a three day long workshop to develop an interactive Web GIS for the GWI (Global water Initiative) Micuenca project (Integrated Watershed Management in Latin America).

Project Coordinator Paul Hicks (CRS) , Norma Minero (CRS) and Karsten Vennemann (Terra GIS) jointly lead a workshop with participants from each of the 4 countries in the Micuenca project: Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Two representatives for each of the countries attended the workshop. As a group we jointly defined and started building the functionality of the Micuenca GIS Viewer. Finally all where working in small groups to assemble and edit data for use in the Web GIS and data base.

CSGIS and Terra GIS collaboration

karstenvennemann — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 00:27:00 +0000

This week Ruth Schönbucher from our Partner CSGIS (Munich / Immenstadt, Germany) joined the 3 day class Interoperable Web GIS Solutions with Free and Open Source Geospatial software as a class assistant.
The class was taught in Seattle at Office Nomads on Capitol Hill, October 3rd through October 5th, 2011. Ruth wanted to to renew her Open Source Web GIS skills (having written a MapServer book some years ago). We are sure that this will be the start for an intensive business partnership and GIS knowledge exchange between CSGIS and Terra GIS.

Agreement of collaboration between Terra GIS Ltd. and gvSIG Association

karstenvennemann — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 18:27:48 +0000

Terra GIS and the gvSIG Association signed an agreement of collaboration. The work of the Association and its collaborators aims at promoting the use of open source geospatial solutions and is not limited to gvSIG products. Terra GIS has the immediate goal to provide enhanced recources to open source gis users such as training and support services along with easy access to documentation and tutorials. The growing list of collaborators of the gvSIG association can be found here.

New Class - Introduction to gvSIG Open Source Desktop GIS

karstenvennemann — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 23:15:06 +0000

Terra GIS is offering a 2 day introductory class/hands on workshop in Seattle on Tuesday November 16th and Wednesday November 17th, 2010 at the King County GIS Center’s Seattle Computer Training Facility. gvSIG is a powerful desktop GIS system that is known for having a user-friendly interface, being able to access the most common formats, both vector and raster ones. It features a wide range of tools for working with geographic information (query tools, layout creation, geoprocessing, networks, model builder, etc.) and provides excellent cartography and spatial analysis tools, and a wide range of spatial database connectivity. More…

Open Source Spatial Database Talk - FOSS4G Barcelona

karstenvennemann — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 10:03:36 +0000

Karsten Vennemann of TerraGIS will be presenting a 25 minute talk about Open Source Spatial Databases at FOSS4G 2010 in Barcelona (September 6th - 9th 2010). More than 1200 participants are expected to join this years conference. There will be more than 120 oral presentations during the conference. The abstracts have been posted online including my talk BEYOND POSTGIS - NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN OPEN SOURCE SPATIAL DATABASES. Join me and over 1000 other Open Source GIS friends in Barcelona at this exciting event!

Download my presentation

Open Source Desktop GIS Workshop at WAURISA 2010

karstenvennemann — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 20:38:27 +0000

TerraGIS will be presenting a half day “pre-conference” workshop on April 19th 2010 at the WAURISA 2010 conference. This years slogan is “rise to the challenge”. The conference is held from April 19th-21th, 2010 in the Greater Tacoma Convention & Trade Center , 1500 Broadway, Tacoma, Washington, USA.

This time I will be talking about “Open Source Tools for Spatial Analysis and Geoprocessing on the Desktop“. A general introduction and overview about the tools covered in this workshop will be followed by examples illustrating the use of desktop utilities based on the OGR/GDAL2 libraries, PostGIS (“the” open source spatial database) and gvSIG (a desktop GIS) for spatial analysis and geoprocessing. During the workshop participants can use a live DVD with their own laptop to go along with some of the exercises.

The workshop consists of the following three parts (with 15 minutes breaks in between the 3 sessions):

Introduction to Free and Open Source GIS Tools on the Desktop
Participants will get a short introduction to the world of Free and Open Source Geospatial (FOSS4G) and about the specific OS tools used in this workshop and their capabilities: OGR/GDAL, gvSIG and PostGIS. (60 minutes, presentation style)
Examples for Spatial Analysis and Geoprocessing using OGR/GDAL, gvSIG and PostGIS
Examples of how to use OS tools for Spatial Analysis and Geoprocessing. This session covers 3 parts:
a. Using the Open GIS Simple Features Reference Implementation and Geospatial Data Abstraction Libraries (OGR/GDAL) and other desktop utilities to manipulate vector and raster data sources.
b. Using the desktop GIS gvSIG and the Sextante extension for your geoprocessing and spatial analysis needs. gvSIG is a powerful desktop GIS and together with the Sextante extension can be used for comprehensive GIS tasks and Image analysis. This combined gvSIG/Sextante system includes more than 220 geospatial analysis functions (for raster and vector data), some of which will be explored in this session.
c. Using the open source spatial database PostGIS (based on PostgreSQL) for geoprocessing is another highly effective and powerful way to do spatial analysis. Because PostGIS exposes it’s functionality directly to SQL many tasks can be performed by simply writing spatial SQL queries or functions.
(90 minutes, presentation style and a lot of live examples, participants can follow some demos
‘hands-on” using the live CD)
Using OS tools for your everyday Spatial Analysis and Geoprocessing Tasks
To illustrate the capabilities of the tools and their use in real world situations and for your day to day geospatial processing tasks. In short this session covers more examples of how to put our OS tools to work. (60 minutes, presentation style and a lot of live examples, participants can follow some demos
‘hands-on” using the live CD)

The official workshop webpage can be found here

Unlocking data trapped in mdb files - on Linux

karstenvennemann — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 19:07:56 +0000

I thought this a nice title for this short post about getting your data out of MS Access files on Linux.

Some weeks ago I had the task to get a schema of the US census summary files into PostgreSQL to subsequently being able to load the entire US data for those summary files (SF1 and SF3).

After some searching on the web I found schemas for those summary files in Access mdb format (SF1 template and SF3 template). Many of the tables in the summary files have well over 100 columns (see screen shoot in pgAdmin on the left hand side) and there are more than 200 tables for both summary files combined. So that was definitely not a quick “punch-the-table-schema-in-quickly” job to recreate the tables in PostgreSQL. Again searching on the web I stumbled about this post mentioning the excellent mdbtools. Great - just the right tool found in time. Since the server where the work is supposed to happen runs Ubuntu there was even no need to compile the mdb tools program at all.

After installing mdb tools via
sudo apt-get install mdb-schema

I could easily export the schemas from the SF1and SF3 mdb files as SQL statements:
mdb-schema -S sf1.mdb postgres > sf1.sql

After running the sql files I had the schemas loaded in almost no time. On this blog there is even a python program using the mdb tools that allows you to directly extract data from mdb files into csv format - sweet.

Have fun unlocking your data !