MapGuide Open Source is a web-based

map-making Cartography (; from grc, χάρτης , "papyrus, sheet of paper, map"; and , "write") is the study and practice of making and using maps. Combining science, aesthetics and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality (or an im ...

platform that enables users to quickly develop and deploy web mapping applications and geospatial web services. The application was introduced as

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

Autodesk Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational software corporation that makes software products and services for the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media, education, and entertainment industries. Autodesk is headquartered ...

in November 2005, and the code was contributed to the

Open Source Geospatial Foundation The Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo), is a non-profit non-governmental organization whose mission is to support and promote the collaborative development of open geospatial technologies and data. The foundation was formed in February 200 ...

in March 2006 under the

GNU LGPL The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a free-software license published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The license allows developers and companies to use and integrate a software component released under the LGPL into their own ...

. MapGuide features an interactive viewer that includes support for feature selection, property inspection, map tips, and operations such as buffer, select within, and measure. MapGuide includes an

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...

database for storing and managing content, and supports most common geospatial file formats, databases, and standards. The MapGuide platform can be deployed on

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

, supports

Apache The Apache () are a group of culturally related Native American tribes in the Southwestern United States, which include the Chiricahua, Jicarilla, Lipan, Mescalero, Mimbreño, Ndendahe (Bedonkohe or Mogollon and Nednhi or Carrizaleño an ...

and IIS web servers, and offers extensive

PHP PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by The PHP Group ...

, .NET,

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...

, and

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...

APIs for application development.

History

MapGuide was first introduced as Argus MapGuide in 1995 by Argus Technologies in

Calgary Calgary ( ) is the largest city in the western Canadian province of Alberta and the largest metro area of the three Prairie Provinces. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806, makin ...

Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Ter ...

. In the fall of 1996, Autodesk acquired Argus Technologies and within a few months the first release under the Autodesk brand was introduced, Autodesk MapGuide 2.0. The software progressed through a number of releases leading up to the current Autodesk MapGuide 6.5. To this day MapGuide 6.5 and previous releases are known for ease of deployment, rapid application development, data connectivity, scalability, and overall performance. Despite its success, the MapGuide 6.5 architecture has some inherent limitations. To this day most MapGuide applications rely upon a client Plug-in,

ActiveX Control ActiveX is a deprecated software framework created by Microsoft that adapts its earlier Component Object Model (COM) and Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technologies for content downloaded from a network, particularly from the World Wide Web. ...

, or

Java applet Java applets were small applications written in the Java programming language, or another programming language that compiles to Java bytecode, and delivered to users in the form of Java bytecode. The user launched the Java applet from a ...

with much of the application logic written in

using the APIs offered by the client-side plug-in. All spatial analysis is performed client-side on rendered graphics rather than on the underlying spatial data. And finally the server platform is very Windows-centric. In spring 2004 a team of developers at Autodesk began work on what is now MapGuide Open Source. Their goals were to retain all of the best aspects of MapGuide 6.5 while also meeting the goals set out above. The project was then submitted to the

in March 2006 under the LGPL license.

References

External links

* Autodesk Free GIS software Formerly proprietary software {{cartography-stub

History

See also

References

External links