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\section{Mapbender Project Update}
\label{sec:mapbender}
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\emph{by Christoph Baudson}

\subsection{About MapBender}
\label{subsec:about_MB}
\htmladdnormallink{MapBender}{http://www.mapbender.org/} is the software and portal site for geodata management of OGC OWS architectures. The software provides web technology for managing spatial data services implemented in PHP, JavaScript and XML. It provides a data model and interfaces for displaying, navigating and querying OGC compliant map services. The Mapbender framework furthermore provides authentication and authorization services, OWS proxy functionality, management interfaces for user, group and service administration in WebGIS projects.

\subsection{ Recent Events}
\label{subsec:events_MB}
 \textbf{January 2007}
    \begin{itemize}
    \item Mapbender 2.4.1 rc1
    \item adoption of coding conventions
    \item establishment of module maintainers                                               \end{itemize}

\textbf{February 2007}
\begin{itemize}
    \item new issue tracker
    \item establishment of a release owner                                            \end{itemize}

\textbf{March 2007}
\begin{itemize}
    \item weekly developer IRC meeting
    \item Mapbender 2.4.1
    \item face-to-face developer meeting in Berlin                                         \end{itemize}

\subsection{New Mapbender features}
\label{subsec:features_MB}
\begin{itemize}
\item \textbf{New administration tools}: metadata handling, new administration interfaces. 
\item \textbf{New treefolder module}: enhanced usability by centralizing controls in one module. Controls in pop-up windows are now obsolete. Also features a WMS status indicator. 
\item \textbf{Metadata gazetteer}: a text search in WMS/layer metadata and keywords. Retrieves WMS or single layers by an AJAX-query. 
\item \textbf{Improved WFS-T configurability}: enhanced user interface for easier and richer manipulation of WFS-T data. 
\item \textbf{Improved digitizing module}: a completely new design following an AJAX-approach. Improved usability and performance. 
\end{itemize}

\subsection{Future Development}
\label{subsec:development_MB}
\begin{itemize}
    \item \textbf{Integration of OpenLayers}: an integration of OpenLayers as an optional Mapbender module is scheduled for 2007. 

    \item \textbf{WFS-T / Digitizing enhancement}: handling of complex geometries. 

    \item \textbf{wider use of AJAX /JSON and OO technology}: improvement of module interfaces to do justice to wider development audience. 

    \item \textbf{evaluation of packing algorithms}: due to traffic minimization, there are few source code comments. JSDoc and PHPDoc will be used to comment in the future. The traffic issue will be resolved by extracting the comments prior to deployment and by packing JS-code. 
\end{itemize}

\subsection{Statistics}
\label{subsec:statistics_MB}
\begin{itemize}
    \item  \textbf{Increase in developer mailing list participation}: 2006 Q3: 40 posts, 2006 Q4: 121 posts, 2007 Q1: 209 posts (until March 19) 

Take a look at Mapbender statistics at Ohloh. Here are some excerpts:

    \item \textbf{Project worth}: \verb|$|2,436,378. "This calculator estimates how much it would cost to hire a team to write this project from scratch." 

    \item \textbf{17 developers}: "Over the past twelve months, 10 developers contributed new code to Mapbender. This is a relatively large team, putting this project among the top 5\verb|%| of all project teams on Ohloh. For this measurement, Ohloh considered only recent changes to the code. Over the entire history of the project, 17 developers have contributed." 

    \item \textbf{Increase in activity}: "Over the last twelve months, Mapbender has seen a substantial increase in activity. This is probably good sign that interest in this project is rising, and that the open source community has embraced this project." 
\end{itemize}

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