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2022-Q4 🎉

· 5 min read
Daniel Hermon

📄 TL;DR​

Introducing new services in raster, vector. New exciting features in the catalog app! Overall improvements and bug fixes.

🚀 Features​

Raster​

Overview​

In addition to complete solution for raster product’s consumption. A few major features where introduced in the new version.

Catalog Service​

Catalog Profile Update​

Additions:

  • transparency - indicates whether a raster layer has transparency

Removals:

  • WMTS_LAYER field removed from record's Links

New available layers:​

wmts_logo
  1. “Best“ layer was updated to latest data in JPEG format
  2. “Digital Map“ update
  3. “OSM“ layer - a civilian OSM map, for more info click here

Tile Serving (“Map Server”)​

General features​

Caching and monitoring improvements.

Ingestion Service (activated via Catalog App in manager mode)​

  1. A full ingestion solution was added for new products for new materials with various raw data formats (j2k, tiff, GPKG).
  2. A partial solution for “updating” existing catalog layers data (currently GPKG only).

Export Service​

Solution for creating raster “offline“ products is now available. (Via API for users with a valid export token) The API supports a webhook when the job finished.

Known Bugs 🐞​

  1. GetCapabilities shows the wrong extent of the layer.

  2. There is up to 5 minutes delay between a layer presented in the catalog to be available for consumption via the tile server.

3D​

3D
  • Overall improvements in serving 3D tiles.

Overview​

Optimal, complete, easy, efficient, and robust solution for raster product consumption is now available. Just start by querying the catalog for the desired product and set your map component up in no time.

Catalog Service​

You are now able to search, and filter all the available 3D photorealistic models in your cloud environment via CSW protocol. Refer to the profile of the 3D records here

Tile Serving Service​

You are now able to consume 3D tiles (b3dm) via the tile serving service in a tile layer (“XYZ”) protocol. Check here for a step-by-step tutorial.

Vector​

vector_team_logo

Query Service​

This new service provides facilities for searching and retrieving feature data from vector layers. buildings layer is now available to query. Vector query service uses the WFS protocol which is a READ-ONLY Web Feature Service. We provide three actions to query the layers:

  • GetCapabilities - returns full capabilities provided by the service.

  • DescribeFeatureType - description of a feature type.

  • GetFeature - the request returns a collection of geographic feature instances filtered according to criteria set by the requesting client.

refer to Query Service.

OpenStreetMap Carto (OSM)​

In this version, can be consumed OpenStreetMap Carto like our other Rasterized Vector products (as a part of Digital Map).

OpenStreetMap Carto (OSM Carto for short) is an open-source stylesheet for rendering OpenStreetMap data to raster tiles.

As this stylesheet is open-source, we had to make a few minor changes compared to the original one:

  1. We changed the stylesheet projection from Web Mercator to WGS84.

  2. We modified the database insertion script to prefer names in Hebrew and English when possible.

  3. We imported data from the Natural Earth dataset in places where we didn't import OSM data.

refer to OpenStreetMap Carto.

Nominatim​

Nominatim (from the Latin, 'by name') is a tool to search OpenStreetMap data by name and address (geocoding) and to generate synthetic addresses of OSM points (reverse geocoding).

In addition to the API, we brought Nominatim UI. Nominatim UI offers a small website for trying Nominatim and inspecting the database content.

refer to Nominatim.

nominatim_search_he

Catalog App​

  • General improvements of the UI \ UX

    • Components redesign
    • New fonts and icons
    • Better error reporting
    • Fly-to 3D model changes automatically map-view to 3D mode

  • Added Vector’s query service in order to visualize an entity and show the details

    app_view

  • New tools suite site is now available via the app

  • The app checks for the availability of graphics hardware acceleration (for more info visit here)

    app_view

Web tools​

The terrain verification tool is exposed as part of the MapColonies WEB tools suite

app_view

Products Management​

  • Discrete values are now selected from a dropdown instead of free text input.
  • You can now stop / resume jobs from the UI.
  • You can now update a rater layer via the UI
  • Job management screen shows jobs from defined date till NOW
app_view

Fixed Bugs 🐞✔️​

Job Management:

  1. The refresh button makes the job’s progress disappear.
  2. Job progress won’t update with new data when the dialog is open.

MISC:​

  1. Backend errors aren't prompted properly to the client.
  2. Special characters support in metadata external ID field.
  3. When opening the file browser in the ingestion form, it messes up the app’s styles. (Refreshing the app helps).
  4. When searching an area on the map for products, update any field from the product’s metadata and then select edit again, the selected metadata will be the old one.

Known Bugs 🐞 ❌​

  1. 3D footprints are not clamped to terrain.