Changing jobs

 5 Responses »
Dec 072009
 

As per February 1st, 2010, I will be changing jobs. The company I work for now has its focus on Oracle. Nothing wrong with that, I’m a senior Oracle consultant (working with Oracle since 1989). But my interest lies with GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and that’s not where the company focuses on. We don’t do PostGIS, we don’t do .NET, we don’t do mobile, we must use the Oracle Application Server (Weblogic now). To me, Oracle is not always the solution. So I decided to change jobs, and go work for a GIS-company. They focus on GIS-solutions, and don’t really mind about what technique is used. The company is Merkator. It’s headquarters are located in Groningen, together with a colleague I will be starting a new “cell” in the midst of the Netherlands, somewhere below Utrecht, or in Utrecht, that hasn’t been decided yet.

Please consider hiring me 😉

Cheers!

GeoServer 2.0

 No Responses »
Nov 042009
 

If you’re a happy GeoServer 1.7.x user, then seriously consider upgrading to GeoServer 2.0. It’s a lot faster, its menu structure is a lot better, the UI is much improved (with a touch of Ajax here and there). I found some minor issues (which I’m looking into before raising my voice), but nothing that should keep you from updating.

I run GeoServer in Oracle’s OC4J 10gR2 (the standalone development version), and it runs without any problems. Since the OC4J is declared dead, I will be looking into deploying it to Weblogic, but that’s a completely different monster to conquer…

Donnie Darko

 No Responses »
Oct 032009
 

From a colleague I got to view the DVD of Donnie Darko. Wow. This is a MUST! OWN! DVD! Don’t argue with me. You don’t know shit. MUST OWN. Yes I did hear good stories about the movie earlier, no it’s not a new movie, but for some reason I never got around viewing it earlier. So I’ll say this to you again: go buy the DVD, or better yet, the BD (there is no Dutch version of it, so I’ll have to order it abroad).

Thank you. Now go on living.

Geoserver + Oracle + OpenLayers/WFS-T – part 4

 2 Responses »
Sep 072009
 

Finally, it works. I found some new samples on the OpenLayers site and some posts in the mailinglist that OpenLayers.Layers.WFS just plainly sucks. Indeed, so I experienced. Instead the writer suggested to use OpenLayers.Layer.Vector and give it a type WFST. So I googled around for some samples, found one, modified it, and….voila….no more empty geometries in the database. YEAH!

Geoserver + Oracle + OpenLayers/WFS-T – part 3

 No Responses »
Sep 062009
 

Yesterday I installed JBoss 4.2.3 and deployed Geoserver 1.7.6 to it and installed the OracleNG plugin. Unfortunately, after setting up the Oracle datastore and some features, inserting via WFS-T still resulted in an empty geometry in the database.

SVN access to the OpenLayers trunk gives an error at the moment, so I guess I’ll have to do some further testing with the 2.0RC of Geoserver.

Geoserver + Oracle + OpenLayers/WFS-T – part 2

 1 Response »
Aug 222009
 

I tried Geoserver with Oracle 11g, and still I get empty geometries inserted into the database. With Firebug I can see that the GML sent is correct, it contains the correct geometry information (in this case: point coordinates), but the receiving end fucks it up. Not sure whether the OracleNG plugin for Geoserver or Openlayers does the fucking up, but I suspect it is the plugin.

Geoserver + Oracle + OpenLayers/WFS-T

 4 Responses »
Aug 042009
 

Dear all,

I’ve been struggling with Geoserver and Oracle as a datastore. In a webpage that uses OpenLayers, I’m trying to use the WFS-T features. Don’t get me wrong, WFS works great. That is, the read-only part. WFS-T works great with shape files. WFS-T works great with PostGIS. But the same page, same WFS-server (my local Geoserver) with Oracle as a datastore just inserts empty geometry columns (NULL). When making the geometry column “NOT NULL” Geoserver and/or OpenLayers just inserts a point with 0.0,0.0 as coordinates. Which is NOT where I clicked on the map (0.0,0.0 isn’t even close to being visible on screen).

So, anyone got WFS-T with an Oracle datastore working? I’m using Geoserver 1.7.5 on Tomcat 6.0.something (latest as of now), OracleNG plugin, OpenLayers 2.8 (local, not the hosted version). With Firebug I can see that the GML being sent in the POST command is CORRECT, i.e. it shows the correct coordinates. Somewhere along the line these are discarded and NULL or 0,0 (depending on the column definition) is inserted.

Change to PostGIS (with almost the same table definition, that’s the beauty of PostgreSQL) and everything works like a charm. PostGIS + Geoserver + OpenLayers is a killer combination!

Let the comments pour in……

Holes

 No Responses »
Jul 232009
 

I guess you’re familiar with The Pirate Bay. It’s a torrent tracker. Under the law in their country, they are not doing anything illegal. But the funny thing with internet is, that it has no boundaries in the traditional way. So legal in one country, can be illegal in another, still you can connect to the content anyway. Mind you, the content on TPB is not illegal. Sure, there are torrents pointing to illegal material, but TPB is not hosting that material. Until it’s illegal to point to illegal software or other copyrighted digital content, they just use the holes in the law.

In every country there are numerous holes in the tax laws. Some countries even put tax on items that already are taxed. Nobody ever complains. The rich just use these holes to get richer and the government just keeps increasing the taxes and nobody ever complains.

It’s a strange world we live in.

40D

 6 Responses »
Jun 122009
 

No, a 40D is not a guitar. It’s a DSLR. And I bought it today (technically speaking: yesterday). It will replace my 350D (which I will keep as a backup camera), but boy-oh-boy: it’s a different world altogether. I like the new machine. It has the same processor as my Powershot G9 (a Digic III) and that produces very nice images. The 40D has a bit more megapixels (10 instead of 8) and it has a ton of extra features compared to the 350D. One that I missed from the start: spot-metering. And ISO-settings in 1/3-stops (so 100->125->160->200 and not 100->200). There’s a lot more, but these are the two I missed most when I switched from Fuji S2 Pro to Canon 350D.

No spectacular pictures yet, just a bunch of testing-testing-1-2-testing….

Guitar

 No Responses »
Apr 272009
 

I’m not sure how long my fingers and my patience will survive, but I’ve started an attempt to play the guitar. An electric guitar, that is. Because I don’t know whether I really like to play it (I like to listen to it though) I didn’t go off and buy a guitar, but lend one from my brother in law. We’ll see how things go.

The main idea behind this is that I want to do something with music again. When I was young (so much younger than today) I played the piano, which I liked very much. But a piano is not really an instrument that you are likely to take to a party and play some music. Since I like guitarmusic (not rockmusic, but the more musical variants) and I know some people playing the guitar actively, I thought that was a sensible choice.

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