AfricaEvents29November2008

What?

Our first OSGEO local chapter meet up! We will chew the cud, show you some cool stuff and start to get people familiar with the brilliant FOSS GeoSpatial products out there!

We'll go through installing some software and getting it to a point where you can have fun with it.

How Much?

There will be a door charge of R50 to cover costs & refreshments. That and an open mind are all you need to bring. If you're staying for the QGIS session in the afternoon you can bring your laptop (Windows, Linux or Mac!)

Where?

St Davids Marist Inanda College
36 Rivonia Rd
Inanda
Sandton

Map and Directions

NB: We'll be in the Prep School computer lab.

When?

• November 29th
• Presentation and workshop segment: 9am to 12pm
• QGIS Bug Party! 12h30 onwards

Who

Your friendly presenters for the day will be:

• Tim Sutton (tim at linfiniti.com) - QGIS hacker and FOSS GIS junkie extraordinaire. Tim eats Weetbix for breakfast because it sounds like Linux. He once rewrote Nkosi Sikelela in C++ because he was feeling patriotic.
• Graeme McFerren - (graeme.mcferren at gmail.com) - GIS researcher and FOSS4G user. Mmm, aspire to be like Tim then.
• Gavin Fleming (gavinjfleming at gmail dot com) - I enjoy my daily FOSS4G fix and telling people how great it was. I'm a 'geoinformation scientist' at Mintek and love to see cutting edge and useful geospatial applications emerging.
• Brendon Wolff-Piggott - (brendon at integratedgeodata.co.za) - Water resources consultant and FOSS GIS enthusiast. I wish there were more hours in the day to keep up with FOSS4G!

RSVP

Let gavinjfleming at gmail dot com know if you're coming as numbers are limited.

Programme

• Be there in time for a 9am start
• Morning session: Introducing QGIS, PostGIS, GeoServer, uDig
• Afternoon session: QGIS Bug Party

QGIS Bug Party

As a preview release there are still various bugs that need resolving and various elements (e.g. translation) that may be incomplete. On Saturday the 29th in Johannesburg, South Africa, members from the Africa OSGEO chapter will be holding a QGIS Bug Hunt Party. We would like to invite people from around the world to virtually participate. Each person attending will get a free copy of QGIS 1.0.0 Preview 2 absolutely free of charge! Sorry no shrink wrap copies available. Preview 2 is the second in a series of preview releases we are making before we release the Stable QGIS 1.0.0 with long term support. We are going to great lengths to polish up QGIS 1.0 for you (inside and out) and we really appreciate all the feedback we have received thus far. Its virtually impossible to ship any software completely bug free, but with your help we can add just a little more shine to the polish! We need your help to:

• test on different machine configurations (bring your laptops!)
• validate existing bugs on each platform
• mark bugs that can no longer be replicated as ready for closure
• create new tickets for bugs that have not been reported yet (please search first to avoid posting duplicates!)
• mark bugs that are duplicates
• provide additional diagnostics so that developers can replicate issues

The idea is not to try to *fix* the bugs, but rather to do a QA session on the bugs in the bug tracker. In the process you will learn how to interact with an Open Source project the Right Way i.e. filing good quality bug reports.

I will start off with a simple show and tell covering:

• where to find the QGIS (and other OSGEO projects bug tracking sites)
• creating an account so you can file non-anonymous bugs and feedback on any OSGEO project bug tracker
• how the bug tracking system works - what the various input fields in the QGIS tracker mean

The approach will be to start by going through any bugs that have not been revised recently, adding additional status information. If you think the bug is fixed, add a comment:

Works for me now, recommend closure, <Your Name>

If you can replicate the bug, add a comment like:

Can replicate, OS: Ubuntu 8.10, QGIS Preview 2, <Your Name>

Use your initiative to deal with tickets that don't fit into the categories above, following a similar approach.

After that I will turn you loose on the queue and a shiny copy of QGIS preview 2 and let you have at it. Party is over when the last man falls asleep at the keyboard! Ok probably we will finish at between 4:30pm and 5pm if my wife has anything to do with it!

We look forward to seeing you at the QGIS Bug Party!!!

Workshop Notes

Lets make a map - First steps with QGIS

First we show you

• Open QGIS using the icon on the top Gnome Panel
• From the Layer menu, select Add Vector Layer

 Layer -> Add Vector Layer

• A dialog box will appear
• Navigate to

 /home/workshop/gisdata/za/brits/SAExplorer/

• Add the following layer:

 Dams.shp

• Experiment with the map navigation toolbar to zoom in / out, pan, select etc features.
• Open the Layer properties dialog. There are several ways you can do this:

 1) Select the layer in the legend and then from the menu do Layer -> Properties
 or
 2) Right click on the layer in the legend and choose Properties from the context menu
 or
 3) Double click on the layer in the legend

• Familiarise yourself with the various panels in the vector properties dialog.
• Select the Symbology tab
• From the Style Options panel, choose a please blue fill colour for your dams then

 Click OK

• Use the zoom tool to zoom in to a dam and marvel at its stunning blue colour.

Now you try!

Add the following layers (also from the /home/workshop/gisdata/za/brits/SAExplorer/ directory)

Hydrology_DWAFRivers.shp
Transport_Mainroads.shp
RSATowns.shp

Zoom and pan around a little to explore your data Symbolise each layer with an appropriate colour to make the most awe inspring map.

Save your project using

File -> Save

And put it into

/home/workshop/gisdata/brits.qgs

What have I learned?

In ten minutes you now know how to add vector layers into QGIS, pan and zoom to navigate the map, set the colour of vectors using the Single Symbol option in the Layer Properties.

Shapefiles shmapefiles....real (wo)men store their data in PostGIS

• Create a new PostgreSQL database
• Install the PostGIS spatial data extensions
• Upload some shapefiles into the database
• Create a table with simple point geometry
• Insert a record into our point table

Install PostgreSQL and PostGIS : Gavin

• create user account
• create a database
• load the bits that finish off the PostGIS setup (plpgsql, lwpostgis, spatial_ref_sys)
• use shp2pgsql to load a shapefile into PostGIS
• perform some basic spatial queries
• show inserting geometries
• show extracting geometries

Install geoserver : Graeme

• install java 1.6 from apt
• grab standalone GeoServer binary
• extract to opt
• export JAVA_HOME=/usr
• start geoserver
• create a datastore
• create a couple of feature types using PostGIS backend
• create a WMS layergroup with a few layers
• demonstrate the result in geoserver's openlayers browser

Install uDig : Gavin

• Connect to GeoServer WFS
• create nice styling (SLD) for layer
• paste into geoserver and reload

Install QGIS : Brendon

• Pull in WMS layer from geoserver
• Pull up postgis layer
• Demonstrate editing and topological editing
• Demonstrate thematic mapping options
• Demonstrate attribute actions
• Demonstrate plugin manager