Migrating ArcIMS to a new machine

1. Install Apache (2.2.x, to c:\Apache2.2\, in my case) and Tomcat (6.0.x, to c:\Tomcat6.0\, in my case) make sure each is able to launch independently. You might need to install Java JDK and set environment variables JAVA_HOME and JRE_HOME to the JDK directory
2. Download mod_jk (1.2.28 httpd-2.2.3, in my case). Install by dragging mod_jk-xxx.so to the Apache modules folder and renaming mod_jk.so. Add this line to httpd.conf: LoadModule jk_module modules/mod_jk.so
3. Add a workers.properties file to the apache conf directory. This file sets options for your ajp (probably ajp13). Make sure it points to your JDK, Tomcat home directory, etc.
4. Install ArcIMS with the 'custom' option during post-install. Make sure that you select the JDK you already installed.
5. Copy over old aimsacl.xml from webapps\servlet\WEB-INF\classes. Give * permissions to all your apps for testing, you can change later if necessary
6. Copy over old old apps from the Tomcat webapps directory. Make sure WEB-INF\classes\Authenticate.properties is pointing to the new aimsacl.xml
7. Use AIMS administrator to set up map service, using similiar settings as old service. Note: on my install 'Output', 'Website', and 'Axl' are all under the Apache htdocs directory
8. Add all applicable webapps directories to httpd.conf as in the following (substituting 'example' for your own app):
JkMount /example ajp13
JkMount /example/* ajp13
9. Change any connection properties in your webapps to match new machine
10. Restart Apache, Tomcat, enjoy.

json_encode pg_fetch_array

For some reason you need to run the result of pg_fetch_array through a loop and store in another array to be able to encode as JSON ... here's an example:

// Connecting, selecting database
$dbconn = pg_connect("host=HOSTNAME dbname=DBNAME user=DBUSER password=PASSWORD")
or die('Could not connect: ' . pg_last_error());

// Performing SQL query
$query = "SELECT * FROM mytable";
$result = pg_query($query) or die('Query failed: ' . pg_last_error());

$resultArray = array();
while ($row = pg_fetch_array($result, null, PGSQL_ASSOC)) {
$resultArray[] = $row;
}

echo json_encode($resultArray);

// Free resultset
pg_free_result($result);

// Closing connection
pg_close($dbconn);

Mapnik ... success!

Here's how I imported, rendered, and served OSM data through mapnik, locally:

1. Do all downloads/installs ... python (2.5 worked for me), postgres/postgis (8.3 worked), osm2pgsql, mapnik, rendering/mapnik utilities for OSM
2. Follow info below on postgres2osm
3. Make sure mapnik bindings are registered with Python, run the demo under demo\python to make sure mapnik works, here are pretty good instructions from the OSM wiki
4. Follow this readme to run generate_xml.py and generate_tiles.py. Use my tips below if you get stuck ... also make sure you keep your coordinates straight ... these scripts won't throw an error, they'll just crash
5. Once you've generated tiles stick them in a web accessible location and use this tutorial to get them working with OpenLayers ... note the "bespoke" section, which shows how to add your custom tiles

... now to customize the rendering I only need to modify the map.xml file created by generate_xml.py ... I could do this manually or might look into the qgis plugin ... also cascadenik looks cool

OSM2PGSQL

After getting mapnik installed and running I realized:

1. generate_tiles/generate_xml (and the rest of the render utilities) are really necessaryfor rendering OSM through mapnik. Therefore, you must download both mapnik through the mapnik site but also the mapnik OSM rendering tools which you can get through SVN at http://svn.openstreetmap.org/applications/rendering/mapnik/
2. you must download world coastlines to get the osm/mapnik utilities to run as detailed here (if you're getting an error about 'world_boundaries', that's why)
3. you must use OSM2PGSQL to import your osm data into postgres ... you can do this through osmosis, but it won't work

Helpful hints with OSM2PGSQL

1. you must run the included .sql in order to create the proper spatial reference information for the projection mapnik likes
2. you must create the database with a postgis template
3. you might need to export through JSOM and encode as UTM8 ... I did this as a safeguard this time and it worked ... if you're having trouble, try this

Related errors:
failed: ERROR: AddGeometryColumns() - invalid SRID
CONTEXT: SQL statement "SELECT AddGeometryColumn('','', $1 , $2 , $3 , $4 , $5 )"
PL/pgSQL function "addgeometrycolumn" line 4 at SQL statement

relation "planet_osm_polygon" does not exist

Loading OSM with OSMOSIS

Now that I've decided to locally render OSM data for the campus, I need to get the OSM data for the maximum extent of campus areas into a local database (both Mapnik and I prefer Postgres). I initially tried doing this by using OSM2PGSQL, but that ultimately failed ... not completely sure why.

Here are the steps I took to load this data into Postgres using OSMOSIS:

Required installations: Postgres with Postgis, OSMOSIS ... tested environment: osmosis 0.32, postgres 8.3, Windows XP

1. Download desired extent from OSM using JOSM ... save the downloaded data as *.OSM
2. Convert this .osm file to UTM8 encoding (e.g. using notepad++)
3. Login to postgres, create a new database based on postgis template
4. Run pgsql_simple_schema_0.6.sql, which is located in the osmosis install location in the 'script' directory
5. Open a command line and run: PATH_TO_OSMOSIS_BATCH_FILE --read-xml file="PATH_TO_OSM_FILE" --write-pgsql host="HOST_NAME" database="DB_NAME" user="USER_NAME" password="PASSWORD", for example: C:\qgis_projects\render\osmosis-latest-bin\osmosis-0.32\bin\osmosis.bat --read-xml file="C:\qgis_projects\render\newark_josm_utm8.osm" --write-pgsql host="localhost" database="gis" user="postgres" password="mypassword"

Plugging away with OSM

Update: Success! Was able to convert to OSM with Export_to_OSM.py, all was needed was to change some paths in the code. Uploads via JOSM using the Open, and Merge commands (I recommend also adding some tag so you can query these out later if you need to do anything with them), then Upload. Watch as I add more layers on www.openstreetmap.org!

Old Post: It now seems I'll be able to use OpenStreetMaps either as the repository and rendering system for the full campus map, or as a selective baselayer for national data (for directions). The answer will depend, in a large part, on whether I am able to get campus layers into OSM.

I have worked with multiple OSM editors: JOSM, markaarter, and the QGIS OSM plugin and none will successfully take a shapefile, allow import into OSM format, and then upload to the OSM servers. I have tried conversion to KML and GPX, since these are formats accepted by one or the other of these editors ... still no dice.

There are scripts and programs which were specifically created to convert SHP (and all kinds of other formats) to OSM. I've checked out some of these programs osm2shp, shp-to-osm.jar even gml2osm ... problem is that they assume you want to map all the shapefile attributes ... seems like it could be a lot of extra work to figure these out for every layer I want to upload.

Installing QGIS with osgeo4w, express crashes

Installing QGIS with a standalone installer is definitely the way to go for someone with little time, no need for other osgeo4w libraries or features in newer ('unstable') releases.

However, as I need other osgeo4w packages as well as features in the 'unstable' release (unstable is somewhat of a misnomer, as I understand, really is just shorthand for saying it has features that aren't fully supported as in the 1.x version), I wanted to install with the osgeo4w package. For some reason osgeo4w crashes when I try to use the express install option, though I needed to use the advanced install anyway in order to get unstable qgis.

Steps for this are as follows

1. download osgeo4w from http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo4w/
2. open installer, select advanced install
3. select the following packages to install: qgis (unstable if you want, which was 1.4 at the time I wrote this), qt4-libs, libpq, zlib, geos, gdal16, ogdi, expat, proj (you will need to rename, read this), xerces-c, hdf4, hdf5, libjpeg,libgeotiff,libpng,libtiff, netcdf,libjpeg12, sqllite3, tcltk, zlib1 (install zlib and make a duplicate renamed to zlib1.dll), curl, iconv, sip, pyqt4,