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MapGuide Open Source

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MapGuide Open Source is a web-based map-making platform that enables users to quickly develop and deploy web mapping applications and geospatial web services. The application was introduced as open source by Autodesk, and is presently hosted with the Open Source Geospatial Foundation under the GNU LGPL. The current version is 2.0, released February 29, 2008.

MapGuide features an interactive viewer that includes support for feature selection, property inspection, map tips, and operations such as buffer, select within, and measure. MapGuide includes an XML database for storing and managing content, and supports most common geospatial file formats, databases, and standards. The MapGuide platform can be deployed on Linux or Microsoft Windows, supports Apache and IIS web servers, and offers extensive PHP, .NET, Java, and JavaScript APIs for application development.

History

MapGuide was first introduced as Argus MapGuide in 1995 by Argus Technologies in Calgary, Alberta. In the fall of 1996, Autodesk acquired Argus Technologies and within a few months the first release under the Autodesk brand was introduced, Autodesk MapGuide 2.0. The software progressed through a number of releases leading up to the current Autodesk MapGuide 6.5. To this day MapGuide 6.5 and previous releases are known for ease of deployment, rapid application development, data connectivity, scalability, and overall performance.

Despite its success the MapGuide 6.5 architecture has some inherent limitations. To this day most MapGuide applications rely upon a client Plug-in, ActiveX Control, or Java Applet with much of the application logic written in JavaScript using the APIs offered by the client-side plug-in. All spatial analysis is performed client-side on rendered graphics rather than on the underlying spatial data. And finally the server platform is very Windows centric.

In the spring of 2004 a dedicated team of developers began work on what is now MapGuide Open Source. Our goals were simple, retain all of the best aspects of MapGuide 6.5 while also meeting the goals set out above. The result is MapGuide Open Source. Autodesk released MapGuide Open Source under the LGPL in November 2005, and contributed the code to the Open Source Geospatial Foundation in March 2006.


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