GeoCat Bridge allows users of Esri’s ArcGIS™ Desktop to instantly publish data online. Now that Bridge is included in the OpenGeo Suite, existing ArcGIS users do not need to adopt a new cartographic toolset to create robust web maps. Instead, they can continue to use Esri software to style and edit maps on their desktop and then use GeoCat Bridge to push their geospatial content online through the OpenGeo Suite. This allows them to leverage the capabilities of the OpenGeo Suite’s open source geospatial stack, which was built from the ground up to support standards-compliant, high-performance web maps.
“The OpenGeo Suite provides a great enterprise solution for existing desktop users who require flexible, powerful, web mapping solutions,” noted Jeroen Ticheler, CEO of GeoCat. Chris Holmes, OpenGeo President, added: “We are very excited to offer the GeoCat Bridge plugin to users of the OpenGeo Suite. This will greatly improve workflows for our users of Esri desktop software, and make it much simpler for everyone to put their maps onto the web.”
Integrated components of the OpenGeo Suite include PostGIS, GeoServer, OpenLayers, GeoWebCache, and GeoExt. The GeoCat Bridge plugin imports maps created in ArcGIS by converting the cartography to the Styled Layer Descriptor (SLD) OGC standard markup with GeoServer-specific extensions. It then uploads this style, along with the data, to the OpenGeo Suite.
To learn more and download a free trial go to http://www.geocat.net/bridge.
