Computing, GIS and Archaeology in the UK

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Edit (Jan 2008): Since Mapguide is being continually developed, these instructions are now a little out of date. For the most up to date instructions you should see the wiki pages on the osgeo site that I and others have been working on.

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As promised, here are my instructions for installing the svn version of mapguide open source on Ubuntu 6.06 server. Standard disclaimer- I did this with a lot of help from the Autodesk team (thanks Trevor). Any improvements, or problems, let me know in the comments. Now, buckle up and get comfy because it’s a long ride…
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Whew, it’s been a busy and eventful week or so. More detailed posts to follow, but here’s a brief roundup of all that’s new in the world of Archaeogeek.

• Finally got Mapguide Open Source compiled and working on Ubuntu
• My presentation on Portable GIS has been accepted for FOSS4G 2007
• My southern counterpart is off to do his PhD

On that last point, we will be advertising soon to fill Leif’s post (more about it on his blog) and are always on the lookout for archaeological computing types at both offices, so if you’re interested then get in touch and let’s talk!

Archaeogeek is now back in the saddle/desk-chair after a few weeks break- firstly entertaining visiting parents and most recently scuba-diving in the Sound of Mull (Scotland)

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In the mean time I have a few projects coming to fruition, and have been catching up on a few things that I wanted to learn more about (hello google maps and database integration). Firstly, we at Oxford Archaeology have been fortunate to have the services of a very skilled and enthusiastic work-placement student called Matt Jones from the University of Southampton for the last few weeks and he has been helping up get our basic web-based mapping sorted. This collaboration was the first to be arranged via the Antiquist Skills Exchange, where people can post about work they have available, or skills they can offer. It’s still a work in progress to some extent but Matt has done sterling work getting it looking good. Thanks also to Bill Woodall from the OpenLayers mailing list who helped immensely with the ajax code for getting the popups to work nicely.

Secondly, I have been fortunate to have some communication with the MapGuide Open Source development team in terms of getting MGOS working on Ubuntu. This is a long process, made slightly more difficult because of the difference in time zones, but we are making progress, and I am just amazed at them for assigning someone to spend time working with me to get the programme working. I can’t honestly imagine many large companies doing this, and it’s a great credit to the new open mindset at Autodesk. We are currently working through the compilation errors as they occur in the code, and I am taking copious notes so I’ll keep people posted.

Thirdly, Oxford Archaeology’s decision to release our data via wms/wfs is still a matter of debate. Unfortunately for every post or comment that approves of our decision, there is another that tries to figure out what we are gaining financially from the decision. I find this sad, as it’s indicative of a mindset in British Archaeology that we are trying to change. I’m not being naive- we might make some fuzzy and indirect gains from this, and certainly our internal efficiency will improve, but it’s really not the main point- we are making a commitment to the free exchange of data.

Well, at last it’s OK for me to tell people that Oxford Archaeology now has a WFS server that is accessible from the outside world. The address is:

http://mapdata.thehumanjourney.net/cgi-bin/mapservwfs.cgi

It’s a standard MapServer setup, and at the moment contains static data about the sites we have worked on over the last thirty years. This is still a work in progress and there are a whole bunch of things I would like to improve (but at least it’s up and out there):

1: As I said, it’s static data. The aim is to get our main databases into PostgreSQL (I’ve talked about this before, and it’s not an easy process to convert messy, historic, access databases into PostgreSQL). In some circles there is a question as to whether we should actually use live data. There are sometimes issues with people looting archaeological excavations, and we don’t want to make that any easier…
2: You may have noticed that I said databaseS (plural rather than singular). Oxford Archaeology only took over the Lancaster Office a few years ago and we are still working towards merging our core systems (along with upgrading them all to sensible, robust OpenSource platforms where possible). The problem with having two databases is that in many cases the fields are not directly compatible, so to get the data out in the shortest possible time I simply included the elements that were common to both, and I will work towards getting more information out.

3: At the moment, there is no fancy front-end to this. I have two candidates in mind for frontends, and I’ve talked about them both a fair bit. They will serve two different purposes, in other words for internal and external use. Externally I’m working towards using OpenLayers, although this might mean that I have to convert or re-project all of our data that is in British National Grid format into WGS84 so I can use something like Google Maps as a backend. Not a problem, I just haven’t done it yet. OpenLayers will give me a fairly basic, but nice looking interface that works in a way that people are familiar with from Google Maps and other sites. It is easy to install and can be built into any web page, so it can be embedded in our corporate site and not look out of place. Internally I want to use MapGuide OpenSource, as it has advanced functionality and a fairly slick style built in (I could use Mapserver and build a front-end myself but this seems like the best approach). However, as my last few posts have explained, I am having quite a lot of trouble compiling this on our platform of choice, so we’ll see.

4: There is only one layer so far. We’ll work on this, but often have licensing issues with our data, so we’ll have to check that out first.

Anyhow, enjoy.