World Famous Comics: GIS for Web Developers: Adding 'Where' to Your Web Applications
GIS for Web Developers: Adding 'Where' to Your Web Applications
By: Scott Davis Publisher: Pragmatic Bookshelf Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Format: Illustrated Label: Pragmatic Bookshelf Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 176 Publication Date: October 09, 2007
Product Description: There is a hidden revolution going on: geography is moving from niche to the mainstream. News reports routinely include maps and satellite images. More and more pieces of equipment cell phones, cars, computers now contain Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers. Many of the major database vendors have made geographic data types standard in their flagship products.
GIS for Web Developers introduces Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in simple terms and demonstrates hands-on uses. With this book, you'll explore popular websites like maps.google.com, see the technologies they use, and learn how to create your own. Written with the usual Pragmatic Bookshelf humor and real-world experience, GIS for Web Developers makes geographic programming concepts accessible to the common developer.
This book will demystify GIS and show you how to make GIS work for you. You'll learn the buzzwords and explore ways to geographically-enable your own applications. GIS is not a fundamentally difficult domain, but there is a barrier to entry because of the industry jargon. This book will show you how to "walk the walk" and "talk the talk" of a geographer.
You'll learn how to find the vast amounts of free geographic data that's out there and how to bring it all together. Although this data is free, it's scattered across the web on a variety of different sites, in a variety of incompatible formats. You'll see how to convert it among several popular formats including plain text, ESRI Shapefiles, and Geography Markup Language (GML).
With this book in hand, you'll become a real geographic programmer using the Java programming language. You'll find plenty of working code examples in Java using some of the many GIS-oriented applications and APIs. You'll be able to:
Find free sources of GIS data on the web
Browse GIS data using open source desktop viewers
Manipulate GIS data programmatically
Store and retrieve data using geographically-enabled databases
Explore free web toolkits like Google Maps
Publish and consume web services using Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) interfaces
A very good bock I was not familiar with GIS system and I got this book to figure out how things work. The book turned out to be a great help for me. Since everything was very new to me I ended up spending a lot of time to learn about the PostGres database, it PostGIS extention and Geoserver. So do not take it as a complete walk through tutorial but it certainly great help when you get stock somewhere. Bear in mind that I am quiet computer savvy and familiar with linux, java and such. Overall, I recommend this book if you are a web developer that wants to deal with spatial data and his needs are beyond things that can be done simply on google Map, yahoo map and such.
Learn To Use GIS In Your Web Apps GIS (Geographic Information Systems) is one of the most important development technologies to be applied in the past few years. By using GIS concepts you can learn to apply geographic code to any and all applications easier and better than ever before. With 'GIS for Web Developers: Adding 'Where' to Your Web Applications' you can learn the ins and outs of how and why you will want to add a GIS presence to your application. With plenty of maps, code samples, and a look at the different GIS viewers and editors out there in the world today, this is a good book for any developer that wants to learn more about GISs and their relationship to GPSs.
Good introduction to the technology.
**** RECOMMENDED
A Real "Map Guy" Shows You How to Get There We have a hard time as software engineers mastering our own concepts. Once we are asked to work in a non-trivial domain like geospatially-enabled environments, it is easy to get lost (pun intended). This book acts as a map to the world of maps. It shows you where you are; in this case, building web-based applications that need to visualize spatially-oriented data. It shows you where you can go without taking too many trips down unnecessary rabbit holes. In short, Scott walks masterly on the very fine line of theory and practice making it both useful and instructive.
In addition to the informational content, the book is one of the more beautiful computer books I've seen recently. The decision to go with color plates for the images is key. In order to fully appreciate the power of visual contexts like this, you have to see the richness of the data.
I worked on one of the first "whole Earth" environments 14 years ago and would have gone bananas for a book like this. The field has changed pretty dramatically since then with the emergence of both the Web and rich and complicated standards like those we are seeing from the OGC. This book lays enough foundation of the theory and catches you up to the new and sexy tools available to us now.
We are not genetically-programmed to stare at words and tables. We are visual creatures and gain real insights when we can see relationships literally laid out in front of us.
Do your customers and users a favor and add some "where" to your applications. Do yourself a favor and pick up this guide to help you along the way.
Excellent, easy summary of a complex subject Prior to reading this book, my experience with mapping technologies was limited to writing Google Maps applications and using its geocoder. I didn't even really understand what a geocoder was.
Scott Davis provides a friendly, easy-going assist to learning the bizarre complexities and conventions associated with real mapping technologies. I was frankly dismayed at the state of the art, with its odd compromises and incomplete, conflicting tools. But Scott leads the reader through the maze quite effectively.
If you're ready to move beyond simple markers and lines, this book shows the way to _real_ mapping applications.
Knowing Where to Start... The book is a *solid primer* for understanding GIS data and its usage.
It will walk you through vectors, projections, and rasters. You'll be introduced to spatial databases and OCG (with a focus on Open Source tools).
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Trevor
