Mastering GeoServer

Mastering GeoServer, as suggested on its cover, aims to provide a basis to leverage the power of GeoServer.The book introduces 12 chapters which open with installation and moves quickly through serving large raster / vector data and complex features, management of output, spatial analysis and finishes with performance monitoring.While not essential, the target GIS audience should have a familiarity with GeoServer. This review draws on approximately 2 years of empirical knowledge of a working application of GeoServer. The preface cites the precursor “GeoServer Beginners Guide” of the same publisher. Again, while not essential, this reference provided useful bridging material and is recommended here also, however Mastering GeoServer is the first book I have read on this topic.Mastering GeoServer has very easy to follow type set conventions which are well defined. Icons, tables and screen dumps are sufficiently to support demonstrations and procedures.The strength of Mastering GeoServer is its content and flow, which is fast moving and tends to focus on prescriptive solutions without getting bogged down with theoretical depth and explanation. This reader was specifically looking for methods for speeding up the serving of very large and high resolution raster mosaic data sets as well as serving, to this point, prohibitively large raster data sets. At the time of this review, some of the solutions for serving these data sets as described in Chapter 2 had been successfully adopted. Similarly, Statewide (Queensland, Australia) vector layers previously too large in the resident environment had been successfully served using techniques suggested in Chapter 3.The book is highly recommended for those with at the least a beginner knowledge base with GeoServer looking to add functionality and performance to their application.

At first glance the structure of the book reminded me of the way that I have done over the years to gain the necessary knowledge to manage geoserver in enterprise environment, so the first thing I thought reading the book was: this is the manual that I have always wanted.It guides you through all the steps, and I mean everyone, involved in getting geoserver seamlessly and efficiently integrated into a geospatial infrastructure.I especially appreciated the chapters dealing with the topics that were most difficult for me to understand during my journey: I refer to chapters 4 "Using GeoServer to Serve Complex Features" and understood 9 "GeoServer as a Spatial Analysis Platform".The first allows you to understand and master the technique to manage and publish through geoserver complex features.The second one, wonderfully explained, allows to configure geoserver amplifying its potential "spatially interactive".So the final judgment is the following: HOORAY!!!!! Finally an operative manual useful to install, configure and put "in action" a powerful tool to manage geographic data.

Very Informative.Mastering GeoServer did a very good job of covering install and setup, with screenshots to help along the way. Also good coverage of working with various data types, as well as some of the more complex features of GeoServer.Recommended for anyone wishing to implement or learn more about GeoServer.

If you are in hurry and a very concise suggestion is enough for you than here it is: buy this book and you won't regret!I have enjoyed very much to read it. I have been using GeoServer extensively in the last years, so I was very curious to read it. I liked the writing style of the authors, the book is very clear and easy to read.As suggested by the title the book is more useful for a user that already master the basic concepts of GIS and GeoServer's basic features.The chapters will guide you trough many interesting topics.Chapter 1, 2 and 3 guides you to configure a production GeoServer installation and to maximise the performance for raster and vector data.Chapter 4 gives a very interesting tour of how to publish complex features.Chapter 5, 6 and 7 focus on how to export maps, both as hard-copy with the printing plugin and tuning the several format GeoServer support as output.Chapter 8 gives an overview of how a Spatial Data Infrastructure should be designed and what is the role of GeoServer inside itThe remaining chapters cover the use of GeoServer as a geo processor, dealing with security and how to control the health of your installationTo conclude this review: this is really a good book that provide a very good insight to the experienced users.

This is the 3th book I read from the GeoServer Packt's series.While some of the content slightly overlaps with the other two books, I have still found a lot of interesting stuff to read, and in a very pleasant writing style.Even if now I think to be enough experienced with GeoServer, I was happy to read the book as I discovered new concepts such as complex features, the control-flow extension and how to configure the LDAP authentication and authorization.Nothing that you won't find on the GeoServer documentation, but still nice to have everything packaged in one single book.The books contains a lot of details about how to use GeoServer in a Windows production environment. While I am not sure why on the earth someone would run a web application in production using a Windows server, maybe this is an almost unique read in case you find yourself in a such a situation.

Great book!Pratical and usefull to improve the safety and peformance of serving maps with geoserver.

An excellent resource, required reading for any team using GeoServer in a production environment. Highly recommended.