GeoServer Beginner’s Guide

More than half way through the book and it was fun to read through the book and set up a GIS web server within a day. No problem to follow for the most part. The only problem was to load a shapefiles into MySQL database. Have tried several times and all failed. There might be a few steps that the book did not provide or explain well. Overall, this book provides a thorough introduction to GeoServer and is a good read.

I work for a County government as the GIS (computer mapping) guy. Our County is very sparsely populated, so we don't have a large budget, but we still need to supply our residents with all that we can. I've been working on setting up web maps; parcels, timber sales, motorized and non-motorized trails, and land sales. A combination of Geoserver, OpenLayers, JavaScript, jQuery, and jQuery Mobile on a VPS running CentOS makes a wonderful map.

Its good for beginners. It has nice examples for starters. Advanced users will have no use of first several chapters. Best chapters are last ones : Securing GeoServer Before Production, Performance and caching and Automating Tasks. All in all its a good book!

If you want to know how to deploy your maps on the web, this is the book. It covers the basic installation and awesome applications. Must have book for map web developers.

Fair starter book for the topic

One reason I work with Geoserver is the availability of this book I give it to customers system support people.

Everything I expected.

Who has had the idea of entitling this book "Beginner's guide"? This manual is much much more! Actually, besides supplying beginners with the basics of GIS and Geoserver, it can well work as an operational manual at a more specialized level. Since several years I've been working with this software (Geoserver) for job, and therefore I have matured a certain experience; in the book I found some information on Geoserver that previously I could obtain only through several researches in websites and thematic forum. I've appreciated very much the "practical" sections and the multi-choices quiz that invite the reader to think again to what he has previously read and, possibly, to read it once more.The section on GIS basics is very important because the given notions help in understanding and fully exploiting the potential of Geoserver; I've enjoyed very much to successfully execute on an ubuntu-like system the detailed and precise procedure for installing Geoserver and all necessary software. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 gradually introduce the reader into the secrets of the management interface and to the way of accessing and loading spatial data. Also in this case I've tried to execute the described procedures by following the tips of the authors: surprise! I've found myself perfectly comfortable both as an "absolute beginner" and as a GIS expert. The descriptions and the observations on the "WMS reflector" functionality are very useful, since this tool helps the user to publish spatial data according to his own needs.Also in chapter 6 the approach is very "soft", since it introduces the reader to the basics of the largely applied OGC standard; but then, gradually, the book checks the reader's abilities with the practical section "time for action", sums up the notions he has just learned with "What just happened?" and finally brings him to dare with the section "Have a go hero".In my opinion, from chapter 7 on, topics switch to an intermediate level: implementation of simple webgis applications, configuration of geowebcache software to enhance performances, description of REST interface to automatize tasks, up to the very important topic of security are treated. Nevertheless, the confidential tone, the numerous references to examples and practical procedures, together with the concepts learned in the previous chapters, allow even the less expert reader to try to implement and manage a simple spatial data infrastructure.Chapters 11 e 12 are really appreciable: they list and describe the basics (and not only) for tuning Geoserver and enhancing its performances in enterprise environments, and how to manage "troubleshooting" also by means of several active "mailing lists". I've been impressed by finding in about 30 well organized pages all the useful references, which makes this book resemble a real, easy-to-use and complete "practical handbook" To sum up, I think that this book is suitable and complete both for those who approach Geoserver for the first time and for those who work daily with this software."

As the title says it is a beginners guide but even after having worked with GeoServer for a couple of years there are things in here that are useful. It is a shame it covers version 2.2 and 2.3.1 has recently come out but the important bits have not really changed so much as to invalidate the book.

Very useful, helped me get up-to speed with implementing GeoServer very quickly. Highly recommended if you are new to implementing GeoServer within your organisation.