Overview of GeoServer for Google Earth Users

Introduction

GeoServer is an open source server built to help enable the 'GeoWeb', just as the Apache Web Server enabled the World Wide Web. GeoServer is focused on connecting existing sources of geospatial data (shapefiles, oracle spatial, postgis, db2, arcsde, mysql, geotiff, arcgrid, ect.) to the wider web through open standards (kml, wms, wfs, geojson, georss). GeoServer also provides a powerful platform for collaboratively editing geospatial data through the web. Currently this is only available through 2d front ends like OpenLayers, and uDig. But we will be sure to implement for Google Earth and Maps as soon as they support a way to do so.

Why GeoServer?

For many cases creating a KML file by hand is more than sufficient. GeoServer is useful when one wants to put a lot of data on to Google Earth. GeoServer operates entirely through a Network Link, which allows it to selectively return information for the area being viewed. By providing an open source implementation of this powerful feature we hope to enable many more organizations to get on Google Earth and the wider GeoWeb. If you've got existing GIS data we encourage you to try out GeoServer to tailor it to the visualization capabilities of Google Earth.

GeoServer's other advantage is that it allows one to separate the data and presentation layers. Data is configured separately from the 'style' of the map, and then applied when the information is requested. If the style or data change then the output will be adjusted accordingly. One can also make use of multiple styles to present many different visualizations of the same data set.

Standards based implementation

GeoServer supports Google Earth by providing KML as a Web Map Service (WMS) output format. This means that adding data published by GeoServer is as simple as constructing a standard WMS request and specifying "application/vnd.google-earth.kml+xml" as the outputFormat. The cool part is that since generating KML is just a WMS call it fully supports styling via the SLD standard. A user can even post their own SLD file to the server and GeoServer will render the data as the user wants, instead of how the server administrator set it up. GeoServer also supports the WFS and WCS standards for access to the raw data, the 'source code' of the maps, for further analysis, modifications, and modeling.

Jump to the QuickStart to get started with GeoServer and Google Earth.