upgrade windows xp->2008 &oracle 9->10 (ms4w/gdal)

Today i performed an upgrade on a ms4w/chameleon app from win xp -> 2008 and oracle 9 -> 10 (non-spatial). I met the following difficulties:

Register apache as a service by rightclicking cmd and choose 'run as administrator', next type apache_install

Open up the firewall by running cmd as administrator and typing:
netsh firewall set portopening TCP 80 "Apache Web Server"

I couldn't get the instant oracle client working in combination with odbc, so in the end i installed the full oracle 10.2 client (error 126, could not load translation library)

Next ogrinfo didn't want to show my virtual odbc layer, it appears the table_name should be in capitals in Oracle 10, (ERROR 1: No column definitions found for table 'mpm_gisonline_mv', layer not usable. and Failed to find layer 'xxx' on datasource)

ogrinfo ODBC:user/pw@tns,XXXX (use table_name here to prevent that all tables are scanned at each request)

sld for geoserver from arcgis

There is a (german) tool out there by Albrecht Weiser to create a sld from an arcgis project, it used to be hosted by http://hgis-germany.de (http://web.archive.org/web/20080123212031/arcmap2sld.geoinform.fh-mainz.de/ArcMap2SLDConverter_Eng.htm) but these days it can be found at http://wald.intevation.org/projects/arcmap2sld

Some documentation is provided by vera lindsay:

How to install and use ArcMap2sld:

1. Download v1.2.2 from http://wald.intevation.org/projects/arcmap2sld

2. Download and install Microsoft .NET Framework from here:

http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=262D25E3-F589-4842-8157-034D1E7CF3A3&displaylang=en

3. Unzip Setup_ArcMap2SLDConverter_1.2.2.zip.

4. To use it open one and only one ArcMap (it lookes for all ArcGIS applications so you can't have catalogue or tools open either).

5. Run /bin/ArcGIS_SLD_Converter.exe. It will default to German so change it to English: Extras>Sprache/Language>English

6. It's prety straight forward from there (at least once you've selected English): select where to save the SLD and other options and click the SLD button on the bottom and whala! Looks like a very nice, clean formated SLD file.


Have a look at http://www.geographie.uni-bonn.de/karto/chapter35_weiserzipf_sld.mobile.pdf

map colors

when writing mapserver mapfiles i always tend to choose the wrong colours (even if the mapfile is created from qgis). Today i found this easy webbased tool, colorbrewer, to create and evaluate great colour schemes http://www.personal.psu.edu/cab38/ColorBrewer/ColorBrewer.html