OpenSource GIS - Salary Information
This quarter I needed an independent study class. I thought it would be a good idea to get familiar with some of the open source gis libraries/applications available out there, so I went to the most hardcore open source professor at my school, and convinced him to give me his sinature so I can do a small web application that is spatially enabled. Basically, it is a small website where you can lookup (anonymous) salary information from H1B visa holders around the U.S.
I've spent last weekend researching what projects I can use to build such a website as well as what programming language I can learn in a short term. So far this is what I thought I would use:
- Apache: Web Server (http://httpd.apache.org/)
- Php: Programming Language (http://www.php.net)
- PostgreSQL: OS Database (http://www.postgresql.org)
- PostGIS: Spatial Extension for PostgreSQL ( http://postgis.refractions.net)
- GEOS: geometry operations library (http://geos.refractions.net)
- PROJ4: Cartographic Projection Library ( http://proj4.maptools.org/)
- TIGER: US Census Bureau street data (http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/)
- MAPSERVER: Spatial data Server. http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/
- Ka-Map: AJAX library for MapServer (http://ka-map.maptools.org/).
- Eclipse with PHP plugin
- Geocoder to be determined.
- etc etc....
the list keeps going and going... and needless to say, all of this is mostly new to me from a functional point of view (i.e. I know they exist, but I've never actually used them to build anything).
I finally got all this crap compiled and in my home Linux machine... what a pain in the a$$ I may add. I don't blame anyone willing to fork the money for some ESRI licenses so that they get a nice setup.exe that gives you everything bundled and you get support. Building this type of site would take me no time if I was using ArcObjects and ASP.net; mainly because I am already familiar with what's available there.... but the whole point is to learn about the open source solutions (and to contribute to the open source ecosystem if I have enough time).
Now that I have a clear idea of what technologies I am going to use, I have to come up with some requirements for such a web application. The first thing that comes to mind, is that the main page should have a simple search text box where someone has to enter an address of the area you are interested in...
Got lots to read for the next couple of months!
I've spent last weekend researching what projects I can use to build such a website as well as what programming language I can learn in a short term. So far this is what I thought I would use:
- Apache: Web Server (http://httpd.apache.org/)
- Php: Programming Language (http://www.php.net)
- PostgreSQL: OS Database (http://www.postgresql.org)
- PostGIS: Spatial Extension for PostgreSQL ( http://postgis.refractions.net)
- GEOS: geometry operations library (http://geos.refractions.net)
- PROJ4: Cartographic Projection Library ( http://proj4.maptools.org/)
- TIGER: US Census Bureau street data (http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/)
- MAPSERVER: Spatial data Server. http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/
- Ka-Map: AJAX library for MapServer (http://ka-map.maptools.org/).
- Eclipse with PHP plugin
- Geocoder to be determined.
- etc etc....
the list keeps going and going... and needless to say, all of this is mostly new to me from a functional point of view (i.e. I know they exist, but I've never actually used them to build anything).
I finally got all this crap compiled and in my home Linux machine... what a pain in the a$$ I may add. I don't blame anyone willing to fork the money for some ESRI licenses so that they get a nice setup.exe that gives you everything bundled and you get support. Building this type of site would take me no time if I was using ArcObjects and ASP.net; mainly because I am already familiar with what's available there.... but the whole point is to learn about the open source solutions (and to contribute to the open source ecosystem if I have enough time).
Now that I have a clear idea of what technologies I am going to use, I have to come up with some requirements for such a web application. The first thing that comes to mind, is that the main page should have a simple search text box where someone has to enter an address of the area you are interested in...
Got lots to read for the next couple of months!