FOSS4G 2009 Press Release 32

-- DRAFT --

= Curious How Various Web Mapping Servers Perform? =

Sydney, Australia. 5 October 2009. http://2009.foss4g.org

GeoServer, MapServer, and ArcGIS Server will be competing for the title of "Fastest Web Map Server (WMS)" at the FOSS4G 2009 conference at the end of October. The Web Mapping Performance Shoot-out compares Web Map Servers in a variety of real world use cases.

This third installment of the FOSS4G shoot-out looks to be even more exciting with the introduction of a team from ESRI. "ESRI supports interoperability with the OSGeo and open source community" says Satish Sankaran, PhD., ESRI Product Manager for Interoperability, " and, as such, are happy to participate in the OSGEO demonstration-'shootout' at FOSS4G. We are also participating in the OGC's Climate Change Integration Plugfest at FOSS4G, and with our colleagues from 52North who will be in the technical exhibits area."

The performance shoot-out will see GeoServer, MapServer, and ArcGIS Server compared in terms of how long they take to generate a map image, from a common set of spatial data. The data formats used will be shapefile, geotiff, ECW, PostgreSQL/PostGIS, Oracle Spatial, and SDE on Oracle. Benchmarking scripts will be executed on a common platform running Red Hat Linux.

GeoServer will be represented by Andrea Aime (OpenGeo) and Simone Giannecchini (GeoSolutions). "With the rapid expansion of GeoServer's capabilities each year, these benchmarking exercises are an excellent forum for us to test it in new and challenging ways," said Chris Holmes, Managing Director of OpenGeo and founder of the GeoServer project.

One of the most important 'rules of engagement' for each Web server team is that all parties must contribute any changes that they make to their software for this exercise, back to their community. As explained by Steve Lime, founder of Mapserver, "Past benchmarking presentations have brought about many improvements in the servers, such as MapServer's improvements in large shapefile indexing, raster read optimization, and labeling placement. The MapServer Project Steering Committee is excited to help with this presentation again." MapServer will be represented by Daniel Morissette (Mapgears), Jeff McKenna (Gateway Geomatics), and Frank Warmerdam.

For more information about the Web mapping performance shootout, see the wiki at: http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Benchmarking_2009, or follow along discussions in the benchmarking mailing list at: http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/benchmarking.

About FOSS4G
FOSS4G is the international Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial conference, which comes to Sydney, Australia, 20-23 October 2009. FOSS4G offers presentations, workshops, demos, an install-fest, and a code sprint. It is presented by the world's best Developers, Policy Makers, Sponsors and Geospatial Professionals and includes the latest geospatial applications, standards, government programs, business processes and case studies. Topics include mobile platforms, location based applications, crowd sourcing, cloud computing, development, spatial standards, integration of cross-agency data, Spatial Data Infrastructures, Sensor Webs, Web Processing Services, Integration of Open Source and Proprietary Software and more.

Upcoming milestones

 * 20 Oct 2009, FOSS4G Workshop
 * 21-23 Oct 2009, FOSS4G Presentations and Tutorials
 * 24 Oct 2009, FOSS4G Code Sprint

Media Sponsors

 * Position Magazine: http://www.positionmag.com.au/
 * Asian Surveying and Mapping Newsletter: http://www.asmmag.com
 * Geoconnexions Magazine: http://www.geoconnexion.com/
 * Directions Magazine: http://directionsmag.com/
 * GIS Development: http://gisdevelopment.net/
 * Baliz Media: http://www.BALIZ-MEDIA.com/
 * SlashGeo: http://slashgeo.org

For more information or to keep informed from the FOSS4G Organising Committee, join our email list or twitter feed at: http://2009.foss4g.org/about_us/

or contact:

Cameron Shorter, Chair of the FOSS4G Organising Committee and Geospatial Systems Architect at LISAsoft

tel +61-2-8570-5050

c a m e r o n. s h o r t e r @ l i s a s o f t. c o m