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GeoServer, ArcMap, and Dropbox

8. July, 2011 • 0 Comments

Realtime editing of GeoServer data stores is easy with PostGIS and QGIS. You can wow your friends by making edits on the desktop and watching them reflect live on your web mapping applications! But what if your friends are using ArcMap (insert punchline here)?

Forgetting about silly things like SDE and the “Data Interoperability Extension”, one is left with few options. No direct editing of PostGIS, no WFS-T support… One is left desperately waiting in anticipation for zigGIS 3.0.  A simple workaround to avoid having to perform multiple ETL processes or FTP’ing shapefiles from desktop to server is to use Dropbox.

• Install dropbox on your GeoServer box
• Set up a shapefile directory data store on your dropbox folder
• Share this folder with your fellow collaborators
• They load the shapefiles from the shared directory on their local machine and edits are automatically pushed to the GeoServer box and updated in your output data streams

Nothing to it! Use this information cautiously, and remember that concurrent editing against shapefiles can potentially get you into trouble…