Open Source GIS Implementation - an Experiment

This post documents my attempt at implementing opensource GIS Desktop and Server. It describes the trials and errors of the process. It may or may not work for your purpose, but I hope others will find it useful in terms of knowing what is involved.

This is the open source GIS software stack I used.

The implementaion process is broken up into serveral parts:

Part 1: Installing QGIS. This is just the installation of the opensource desktop GIS, QGIS, which I've already written a document on how to do this.  Although it is for QGIS 2.14 the process will be the same for the current version 2.18.

Part 2: PostgreSQL/PostGIS Installation.

Part 3: Creating a PostGIS database. This part goes over how to import an ESRI file GDB to a PostGIS database using ogr2ogr command line utility.

Part 4: Installing GeoServer.

Part 5: Publishing PostGIS to GeoServer. This part goes over how to publish or push PostGIS database to GeoServer

Part 6:  Using Leaflet and OpenLayers to test that layers GeoServer can be called. 

I tried OpenGeoSuite 4.8 (free version from Boundless but require email sign up) which was really easy to install and used. The version of OpenGeoSuite I tested uses slightly older versions of GeoServer and PostgreSQL/PostGIS. I wanted to use more current versions of the software in the stack as well as wanting to know how to each component worked, so I tried my hand at implemnting each components of the stack myself. Of course it's not as easy as just  using OpenGeoSuite but at least I learned a lot in the process.

Here are the specs on the machines that I tested.

Tested on Windows OS Machines
Installation of Postgres/PostGIS on both a Windows 10 OS x64 laptop and a Windows Server 2012 R2 virtual machine for testing. The Windows Server VM already has a web server (Windows IIS) already set up at my work by IT so I used that. Also for my laptop I just used/enabled the Windows IIS already available. 

Laptop Specs: Dell XPS 13

Windows Server 2012R VM

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