OpenGIS WMS certification

We are proud to announce that our Demis WMS product has been certified to be OpenGIS WMS 1.1.1 compliant after passing all the compliance tests as provided by the OpenGIS consortium inc.

Only a selected few of all the registered products using the WMS protocol have been able to pass the strict suite of tests required to be certified as OpenGIS WMS compliant. As we were amongst the first to adapt the WMS protocol a few years ago, we are proud to be amongst the first few companies to provide an officially certified product.

• We have slightly changed the name of the product, to Demis Web Map Server, in short Demis WMS
• The Setup procedure has been greatly simplified, there is no need to manually set up DCOM configurations or server scripts, after installation you can immediately test the server using two shortcuts (sample map capabilities and image) provided in the start menu for diagnostic purposes.
• Support for the OpenGIS WMS 1.0.0 / 1.1.0 / 1.1.1 version specifications.
• Capabilities XML is now generated automatically by the server, so in most cases there is no need to edit the XML files manually
• Changes in the maps no longer require restarting of the server, instead you can reload individual maps from the control panel without interrupting the server
• Support for plotting contour lines for gridded datasets
• Line and point symbol sizes can either be specified in pixels, or in map units
• "Zoom levels" can now be set in Mapper using "true" scale denominators (i.e. 1:1,000,000)
• Support for (uncompressed) Windows BMP images
• Support for GIF format images, using a transparent background color
• Support for Macromedia Flash bitmap format (SWF)
• Support for ASP.NET
• A Macromedia Flash component and sample scripts making up a simple Flash based client are provided (source code included)
• A standard server script will be installed in http://localhost/wms/ to provide a standard interface for all map services installed on the machine. (you can access this by specifying the name of the map, as in http://host/wms/wms.asp?wms=WorldMap&request=capabilities)
• The "classic" ASP/DHTML example scripts have been updated to support the latest browsers, including FireFox 1.0, Netscape 7.X and most other browsers (available from the Downloads section)

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World Map data set improvements

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• Marine features, which were not included in Vmap0 have been included using older DCW data sets
• Elevation points, which appear to be full of errors in Vmap0 have been replaced with the original DCW data
• A new bathymetry dataset, ETOPO2 from NOAA has been included to enhance bathymetry resolution
• The scale limits that control the display of scale dependant layers have been optimized to work better with the new definition of zoom levels
  
  

Possible issues with this upgrade

• Existing (WMS 1.0.0) scripts may not work properly if you try to use them "as-is" with the WMS 1.1.0/1.1.1 version protocol.
• The MIME types for XML formatted output have been changed by the WMS 1.1.0/1.1.1 specifications, so if you request the capabilities XML using 1.1.0 protocol, the browser will refuse to display it in the usual fashion. (we are NOT happy with this, but we do need to comply to the new specifications as strictly as possible) the work-around is to first save the XML response to a file with the .XML extension before opening it, which is a bit inconvenient
• When loading older map files into Mapper 6.0 or the Demis WMS 4.0 server, the old "zoom level" values will be converted to the new scale definition approximately, however, it is recommended you optimize the resulting settings if you are using scale dependant layers like the standard world map data set does.
• Otherwise, the new version should be fully compatible with Demis MapServer 3.x based applications using WMS 1.0.0 version protocol.

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Software Updates

March 2005 - Demis WMS 4.10 update

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This is a free maintenance update for all Demis WMS 4.x users, the most important improvement being a dramatic improvement in the Relief shading which makes the map look much nicer.

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A complete list of the most important changes since the original 4.0 version is given below, in chronological order:

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• OpenGIS WMS certification
• ASP.NET connector is provided in addition to the "classic" ASP connector
• Installation issues on Windows 2003 and XP SP2 were solved
• Enhanced labeling functionality, avoiding overlapping labels
• Improved stability in extremely high load scenario's
• Added metadata and copyright message options in the control panel
• Added support for the WMS 1.3.0 version protocol
• Added support for MrSID compressed images
• Dramatically improved Hillshading algorithm
• Improved support for multi-byte character sets (i.e. Chinese, Arabic)
• Entering your license key no longer requires restarting the server
  

May 2006 - Demis WMS 4.20 update

A free maintenance update for all Demis WMS 4.x users, providing several product enhancements:

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• New option for plotting text labels, using a "halo" effect to greatly improve readability
• ASP.NET connector is provided in addition to the "classic" ASP connector
• Use your own bitmaps (gif/png/jpeg) or windows metafiles (wmf) as point symbols
• Support for DTED terrain data
• Support for JPEG2000 format image data
• Improved import of shapefiles with attribute data (DBF)
• Code was merged into a smaller set of DLL's
• Improved implementation of WMS version 1.3
• Added NASA WorldWind connector script

November 2007 - Demis WMS 4.30 update

A free maintenance update for all Demis WMS 4.x users, providing one major product enhancement:

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• Enhanced support for ESRI shapefiles, so you no longer need to import them "manually"

November 2007 - Demis WMS 4.30 update

Again, a free maintenance update for all Demis WMS 4.x users, providing one major product enhancement:

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• New software installation (MSI technology) to resolve issues related to Windows 2008 Server and Vista.