Mapbender Report 2007

= Mapbender =
Retrieved from http://www.mapbender.org/Annual_report_2007
* Period covered by report: Jan-Dec 2007
* Contact name: Christoph Baudson, christoph@osgeo.org
== Key Accomplishments ==
(the top 5-10 key items that the project or PSC accomplished this period)
=== quality assurance ===
* increased the percentage of re-usable code by switching from script-oriented to object-oriented design
* since 02/07: well-used bug tracking system Trac supplied by OSGeo (163 tickets up to now), supplement of patches for bugs.
* since 03/07: well-defined release proceedings, releases on a regular basis (at least 4 releases per year)
* 12/07: optimization of Mapbender's load process: it now loads 4-5 times as fast.
* since 04/07: growing HTML API of JavaScript and PHP classes, for example https://svn.osgeo.org/mapbender/trunk/documents/jsdoc/index.html
* 01/07: establishment of coding conventions, see http://www.mapbender.org/index.php/Code_conventions
=== community building ===
* since 03/07: regular, productive weekly IRC meetings, see logs at http://www.mapbender.org/index.php/IRC_Meeting
* 05/07: development sprint with around 20 participants
* since 01/07: integration of several new developers outside of the core team (Michael Schulz, Marc Jansen, Marko Samson etc)
* since 07/07: development of internationalisation techniques (in collaboration with italian developers)
* multi-language documentation at www.mapbender.org
== Areas for Improvement ==
(any weaknesses in process, software, management, etc. that you plan to address or recognise need some help)
* enhance international outreach, address more people outside Germany (or Europe)
* develop an easy-to-use update routine
* integration of OSGeo software, like OpenLayers
* despite having an opportunity to host demos at Telascience, a machine with better connection to Europe might be desirable. The server is very slow here.
== Opportunities to Help ==
(list areas that could use some help from members and readers of the report)
* Wiki: Request for an Account and add your web application to the Mapbender Gallery or help on the documentation 
* Contribute your set of buttons to make Mapbender look better
* Offer service around Mapbender, there is still a lot of commercial potential
* Join development by throwing code over the fence or joining the core development team. We need people who have fun creating Web 2.0 style interfaces and have a hand for design work
* Fund core development by sponsoring
== Outlook for 2008 ==
(this is the motivational part that is meant to inspire readers to keep their eyes open for great stuff in 2008 :))
* release of Mapbender 2.5, featuring i18n, KML support, optimized code etc.
* stabilise and enhance input/output of standardized formats like WMS, WFS, WMC, GeoJSON, KML
* continue to work on re-design to allow interoperation with state-of-the-art software
* WFS FilterEncoding interface - this means that you can query geographic objects for spatial and attribute data
* SLD Editor
* Install / Setup script
* Catalog connectors 
* Enhanced update functionality 
* new interfaces (badly needed, we still look like from the late nineties...)
Maybe (depending on interest - so ask for it!)
* OpenLayers as alternative map interface
* FeatureServer support
* Tile cache support
Category: Reports 2007