How to Publish Data to the Gulf of Maine Mapping Portal

Index

• Introduction
• Background Information
• Publishing to the OGC Web Map Service Specification
• Testing Your New Service
• Registering Your Data
• Notifying GoMMaP of Your New Service

Introduction

GoMMaP and Open GIS Consortium Web Services

Recent developments in the mapping industry have focused on the development of open standards for the sharing of geographic information through web services. The Open GIS Consortium (herein referred to as "OGC") has been the focal point for these efforts with the result being software solutions that have enabled distributed organizations to more easily share geographic data.

GoMMaP was developed to leverage the many new web mapping services that have come online through a recent joint project between GeoConnections in Canada and the Federal Geographic Data Committee in the United States. In fact, all of the maps that you see on GoMMaP are accessed directly from various organizations in Canada and the USA.

If your organization is interested in making your data accessible to GoMMaP, please read through the information below to assist you in contributing to this growing mapping resource for the Gulf of Maine.

Background Information

For a good introduction to the OGC's Web Map Service standard see the Web Map Service Primer.

Publishing to the OGC Web Map Service Specification

Please select one of the following options that suits your needs for publishing data.

1. Publishing with Commercial Internet mapping technologies (other than the University of Minnesota MapServer)

   Most of the major vendors of Internet mapping technologies now incorporate support for the OGC Web Map Service specification. If you are interested in using a particular vendor's product, documentation should be included to support you. Once you have published your data to the Web Map Service specification, proceed to the "Testing Your New Server" section below.

2. Publishing with UMN MapServer
3. Assistance with Publishing Your Data to GoMMaP

If you require support publishing your data to GoMMaP beyond what is available here, including finding another organization to publish your data for you, please send an inquiry to info@gomoos.org.

Testing Your New Service

You can test your new service to see if it is operating properly through the tools provided on GoMMaP. Go through the following steps to validate your service before going further:

1. Open a new browser window and go to the Map Builder application.
2. Click on the '+' button on the upper right of the interface. This will open the 'Map Browser' window.
3. Click on the 'Servers' button on the upper portion of the interface. This will open the 'Manage Servers' interface.
4. Halfway down the interface, you will see a 'URL' field under 'Server Properties'. Enter your base service URL for your new service in this text box.
5. Click the 'Add' button below which will cause the application to load the capabilities of your service. This may take 10 or more seconds if you have a large number of layers being published.
6. If successful, you should see your service added to the list of available servers at the top of the interface. If everything has worked correctly to this point, click the 'Close' button at the bottom of the page which will close this dialog and return you to the 'Map Browser' interface.
7. In the top left drop down list, you should now see your new server - select the server from the drop down list.
8. The layers included in your service should now be available in the window below - try navigating through the tree view to confirm your layers are listed.
9. Select any of your layers and you should see a preview in the top right box.
10. Finally, try adding one of your layers to the main map by clicking the "Add Layer" button after selecting a layer from the list.
11. Click the "Close" button. If your layer is visible on the main mapping application then your service would appear to be working correctly.

If you have any troubles with the above, please contact GoMMaP at info@gomoos.org with a request and we will try to help you as soon as possible.

Registering Your Data

Now that you have successfully published your data to GoMMaP, you should register your service and your organization so that others can discover your data.

• For Canadian data, you can register this information on the GeoConnections Discovery Portal. Information can be found at http://geodiscover.cgdi.ca/gdp/advertising?language=en.
• For US data, you can register this information on the FGDC's GeoSpatial One Stop. Information can be found at http://www.geodata.gov/pubregister/.

If your dataset straddles the Canada-US border, you are encouraged to register in both countries.

Notifying GoMMaP of Your New Service

We want to know about your new public map service! Please contact us at info@gomoos.org about you service and we'll incorporate it into the GoMMaP portal.

Future Additions to this document

• Tutorial and sample data to show how to publish data to the other members of the Gulf of Maine.
• Addition of OGC Publishing Tool when developed.