FOSS4G 2009 Press Release 31

-- DRAFT --

= Curious How Various Web Mapping Servers Perform? =

Sydney, Australia. 21 September 2009. http://2009.foss4g.org

Preparations have begun for the upcoming presentation of the Web Mapping Performance Shoot-out at FOSS4G 2009, where several Web mapping servers will be compared through various real world use cases. This is the third installment of the shoot-out, which was presented at the last two FOSS4G events. Always a well attended presentation, this year's benchmarking tests look to be even more exciting; the FOSS4G organizing committee is pleased to announce that a team from ESRI will also be involved in the shoot-out. 

The shoot-out will see GeoServer, MapServer, ArcGIS Server, and possibly other servers 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, and Oracle/SDE. Benchmarking scripts will be executed on a common platform running Red Hat Linux.

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'. Indeed past benchmarking presentations have brought about many improvements in the servers. "Past benchmarking exercises at FOSS4G have led to many improvements in the MapServer code base, such as improvements in large shapefile indexing, raster read optimization, and labeling placement. The Project Steering Committee is excited to help with this presentation again" said Steve Lime, of the MapServer PSC.

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

 * 21 Sep 2009, Poster Submission closes
 * 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/

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