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Home - General / All posts - Radian Studio can access entire Province of British Columbia WMS map data library EPSG 3005
tonyw
736 post(s)
#24-Feb-17 18:15

With Manifold I had been trying for years to access natural resources data via our provincial government's WMS servers. http://www.georeference.org/forum/t122516.21 The issue was Manifold only recognized the first coordinate reference system on the server which was lats and long and did not recognize ESPG 3005 (BC Albers). In 2014 Adam suggested I check out Geoserver and that worked as an intermediary image server. Now, before running Manifold I would start GeoServer. Geoserver would download the layers I want and re-serve them to Manifold in UTM9 (Manifold 8 doesn't recognize BC Albers).

Radian Studio 9 can connect directly to the provincial WMS servers without an intermediary wms server. I now have straightforward access to several hundred layers with everything you wanted to know about natural resources, resource development, wildlife, fish observations, surveyed properties, administrative boundaries, etc. in the province.

If anyone is interested in WMS layers to play around with in RS9, click File > Create > New data source and in the source field paste in:

http://openmaps.gov.bc.ca/geo/ows?version=1.3.0&

Give it a minute or two to load all the layers. Projection is BC Albers (ESPG 3005). Note some wms layers with a lot of detail, such as contours, are only visible at larger scales, so you need to zoom in.

Question, in RS9, is there way to reduce the opacity of a wms layer? For instance the Parks and Ecological Reserve layer is a solid colour which covers the underlying hillshading of the basemap layer? Or is that more a GIS function to come in M9?

Dimitri


7,413 post(s)
#24-Feb-17 19:29

Question, in RS9, is there way to reduce the opacity of a wms layer?

Not yet. Will be implemented in updates coming soon. :-)

Thanks for the link to WMS layers... I have to say those get addicting once you get started! :-) By the way, there are also plans to do a quick Download function like the unlink in R8 so you can connect to a server and create a local image of desired extents, etc. It will be a great way to get local data from web servers.

tonyw
736 post(s)
#24-Feb-17 19:52

Is the download function like the caching that seems to happen in M8? I notice if I'm in a location without Internet that with M8 I still have some of my background images though limited to the best resolution I worked with when I did have an Internet connection. Being able to download background images with good resolution would be very handy.

Dimitri


7,413 post(s)
#25-Feb-17 05:16

Is the download function like the caching that seems to happen in M8?

No, it is different. Plus, caching is already in Radian.

When you connect to a server with Radian if you check the caching box (checked by default) it caches tiles that have been fetched in a cache folder within the System Data folder hierarchy in the project pane.

That is different than 8. 8 cached everything for all projects in folders in the Windows file system. There are pluses and minuses to that approach. The plus is that different projects that used the same imageserver would use the cache, at the cost of slower startup times. The minus is that if you took the project somewhere else, like onto a portable computer, you lost the cache, and it was slower.

Also, it was a hassle remembering exactly where the cache was so people could end up with huge amounts of storage on disk without realizing it. I'll bet this thread is an example of that: when you write "seems to happen in M8" I guess you probably have gigabytes of cached files on your computer that perhaps could be cleaned out.

With Radian the cache is in the project so it is far faster than files in Windows. If you copy the project to some other device you copy the cache as well. How big the cache is obvious from the size of the project file and there is no mystery where it is located. If you don't want big project files or if you don't want the cache you simply open the System Data folder and delete the cache hierarchy, or just that part of it you don't want.

If you want to share cache with other projects or users, create the web server data source on some convenient, free DBMS and then different users and different projects can use that and share the cache.

About downloads and unlinking:

Release 8 also gives you the ability to create a local image stored within the project by unlinking an image that is linked from an image server. It is like unlinking a table that was linked from a different source: what used to come in from external storage is downloaded as a local image. In Release 8's case there is a dialog that shows which intermediate levels are available and how many of the tiles for each have been cached.

Release 8 takes what you specify in that dialog, looks at what it has in the cache and then goes out to the web server to make repeated requests to fetch whatever tiles are necessary to construct the image given the extents and levels you specify. If you know what you are doing it is great and if not it can be slightly confusing.

The term "unlink" is accurate and technical but with Radian the feeling is that "download" will be better. When that function arrives there will be means to specify what is to be downloaded into a local image.

Example: The 36 GB image of a few hundred square miles around Boston cited in this thread was created in Release 8 during initial Radian development, to provide a nice, big image to try out. These days it is considered an "average big" image but it is still cool.

I have to say there are advantages and disadvantages to downloading instead of leaving the data on the server. With downloads you can get data that the organization refuses to provide as files or which are locked up in ultra-proprietary formats. You also have the actual data in a form that is far faster for things like calculations. And you have the data on hand so that if the link disappears or changes you still have the data.

The downside is that it is convenient to leave petabytes of data on servers instead of storing it yourself. It is also nice to have data that is updated for you on the server. As Internet gets faster, the servers for most organizations will remain slow and overloaded, but over time they get slightly faster too as people upgrade to stronger hardware.

One more thing, intended as a gentle reminder for the forum: It is good if people who can give hints about advance features can do so without opening up a can of worms. A hint should not be taken as an offer to provide details and discussion about them in advance. Taking a hint as such will have the negative effect of training Manifold people to never, ever hint about coming features. :-)

People interested in features that are the subjects of hints should keep an eye on the cutting edge section of the forum. When the feature arrives, see what it is and study the notes for it, trying variations and so on.

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