ESRI? Autodesk? Deegree? Mapserver? Geoserver? Oracle? Manifold? Mapinfo? … Show me your muscles (in my best Arnie voice). Don’t forget that results from real world users, not just developers are just as valuable.

On the benchmark side of things, I have also updated the Mapserver results with the 5.6.1 build. Sheesh, talk about being spammed very vocal ECW support was dropped and unfortunately I was unable to get the Kakadu JP2 driver working. I’ll update the individual graphs when I get some time but here is the formats-by-product result. The solid, bold line represents 5.6.1, the dotted stroke the original 5.4 results. Yes, something crazy happened on the TIFF External test but I reproduced the result over the typical 3 test run … will revisit that one later.

Request a Download
The ECW SDK 3.3 and the ECW SDK 3.3 Source Code are made available for download on an as-needed basis, after consultation with the product manager, Mr. Paul Beaty. To request a download, please contact by e-mail Mr. Paul Beaty, paul.beaty@erdas.com, with your name, organization, full address to include country, telephone, and email, and a description of your intended use. Use of the SDK requires advance acknowldgement of a EULA.

We have been forced to remove the direct download link due to numerous, frequent disregard for the attached SDK license terms and therefore ERDAS’ Intellectual Property. This post is not aimed at anyone in particular, but I emplore any potential users to email Paul and he would be happy to provide you the SDK. I just got off the train with the guy and he is eager to talk to anyone on our core technology, including a lot of new functionality available in the upcoming SDK v4 series which contains some pretty exciting stuff, v3.3 is over 3 years old guys!

We understand previous license terms have been somewhat ambiguous for some users, therefore emailing Paul will also ensure your intended use (and thus your organisation) complies with the terms and allow ERDAS to better track the usage throughout the community.

I am sure Paul will update his blog with more information very soon *hint hint* …

So here’s my thought. It might fail miserably; I might get no-one submitting any responses but here goes. If it fails, then there’s always Barcelona i guess and the list

I’d like to propose the following raster challenge to whoever is reading this (eg. you). You do not need to be the software developer on the project, in fact it will be more interesting if there’s both developer and real user feedback!

1. Download the BlueMarble world-topo-bathy-200406-3×86400×43200 (2.2 gb torrent) worldwide series
2. Convert, tile, compress, pyramid, overview, palette the original dataset into whatever format or file composition you’d like. Configure your server accordingly to read the dataset and serve out as an OGC WMS
3. Document the steps used to configure the dataset (hint: reproducible). Include details on the final disk storage and or number/size of files
4. Document your server hardware configuration. Particular emphasis on OS, CPU, Memory and Disk configuration
5. Document your software configuration. This time you’re not bound to prior documentation so developers, go for your life … users, do your best
6. Download the attached JMX plan and reconfigure the server details. Do not modify any other part of the plan apart from Lines 482 to 550
7. Install JMeter if you havent already and execute the plan
   1. jmeter -n -p jmeter.properties -t myserver-bluemarble.xml -l myserver-bluemarble.xml.logs
8. Run the OSGEO Benchmarking summarizer.py
   1. python summarizer.py myserver-bluemarble.xml.logs > myserver-bluemarble.xml.sum
9. Zip the documentation, myserver-bluemarble.xml.logs as well as myserver-bluemarble.xml.sum
10. Email the zip to me at chri…@webmapper.com.au and i’ll update the benchmarking page as soon as they come in

The idea behind this is to remove any ambiguity behind a single person configuring all apps, see if the they scale across different deployments, allow applications to use their “preferred” format and most importantly see whether users can reproduce the results!

This is clearly not going to be a comparative exercise. Even if you dont have a crazy 8/16 core server machine, I’d still urge you to submit the results. The point here is to get as many applications documenting how to squeeze the highest peak performance out of each. Results will not be compared as the platform will never be the same by design … Apple. Meet Orange.

Let the games begin~

ESRI Image Server vs LizardTech Express Server

http://geoinfo1.lib.uidaho.edu/loadtest/ (June 2009)

Not much background info on the test setup in particular the input data … but the Pylot results are available and when compared produce a clear winner in LizardTech at all tests. The following are the throughput achieved at 50 user load. The average response times showed Express Server with ~0.5 sec average compared with ~2.5 seconds with Image Server.

Pursuit of the Perfect Digital Ortho File Format

http://www.igic.org/training/pres/conf/2009/perfectortho.pdf (February 2009)

Although again lacking specific reasoning on how they ran the tests., this one is more centered on desktop performance reading a variety of raster formats. There’s a couple of flaws with the support table, as ECW is in fact supported through Microsoft Office and likewise ESRI Image Server can also read the format after purchasing the required license from ERDAS. I would have liked Larry to list the resulting file sizes but his general consensus of running with 2 formats … Geotiff + JPEG compressed with ECW seems like a common conclusion. People seem to forget however that as soon as you introduce enterprise image serving capabilities, the output formats caters for the common request to be able to open in MS Paint or MS Word. I would love to see someone try to open a 700mb JPEG Compressed GeoTIFF in Paint without waiting a very, very long time

Overall though, ECW achieved very good performance in many of the tests with Geotiff winning some large scale tests, presumably when it was requesting 1 reasonably sized geotiff tile

]]> http://blog.webmapper.com.au/2009/12/23/on-the-hunt-for-some-more-benchmarks/feed/ 3 http://blog.webmapper.com.au/2009/12/16/benchmarks-updated/ http://blog.webmapper.com.au/2009/12/16/benchmarks-updated/#comments Wed, 16 Dec 2009 07:07:33 +0000 Chris Tweedie http://blog.webmapper.com.au/?p=336 Small update,

1. Added a new ECW 256px tile test
2. Added a new ECW reprojection test
3. Added some more info on my mapguide config problems

I’m still keen for someone to verify my numbers. It would be nice to know whether I’m alone in the universe or not even if the setup is different ..

If you are getting something like the following in postgresql.log on Windows or are just tearing your hair out wondering why the service that was working before is no longer starting …

2009-12-04 09:05:37 WSTLOG:  database system is ready to accept connections
FATAL:  could not reattach to shared memory (key=240, addr=02690000): 487
2009-12-04 09:05:38 WSTLOG:  autovacuum launcher started
2009-12-04 09:05:38 WSTLOG:  background writer process (PID 9712) exited with exit code 1
2009-12-04 09:05:38 WSTLOG:  terminating any other active server processes
2009-12-04 09:05:38 WSTLOG:  all server processes terminated; reinitializing
2009-12-04 09:05:48 WSTFATAL:  pre-existing shared memory block is still in use
2009-12-04 09:05:48 WSTHINT:  Check if there are any old server processes still running, and terminate them.

To reliably fix things for me anyway,

1. Delete postmaster.opts or postmaster.pid (if they exist) in your postgres data dir
2. Kill the pg_ctl.exe process (if running)
3. Start the postgres service

Success!

This offer also extends to anyone else at Foss4g who may draw similar conclusions for ERDAS not participating in the event. I’m easy to spot in a crowd

I have never been fond of this mythical Opensource vs Commercial divide in the spatial industry; even when I was exclusively using opensource software. Mapserver is no different from a commercially competitive point of view than ESRI products.

Bruce,

Lets set the record straight here. We were invited, but declined. There is nothing more to it.

I will be at FOSS4G on Thursday and Friday on the CCIP booth. Swing by and I will sit down and show you whatever you seem to think we are hiding?

The FOSS4G benchmarks are a great starting point and I would like to think we can be involved next year. I really hope customers do much more by way of due diligence in selecting enterprise software than just some benchmark results.

Lets not forget that we are not the only ones not competing in the event. Mapguide, Deegree, Mapnik, Cubewerx, Mapinfo, Oracle, Cadcorp, Manifold  … the list goes on (notice, there is no delineation between OS vs Commercial here). There is no conspiracy here mate and I’d be happy to show you.

Look forward to seeing you next week.

Regards,

Chris Tweedie
ERDAS Australia

Now, where did that unicorn go and my car with that rocket booster …

It gives us great pleasure to announce that the pilot application awarded the development contract for the gvSIG Mobile application by the Regional Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport is available. gvSIG Mobile is a smaller version of gvSIG which has been adapted for use in mobile devices. It supports shapefiles, ECW, WMS and images and is able to make use of GPS systems. Currently, only the visualization of layers and the generation of GPS tracklogs/waypoints are supported.

gvSIG Mobile … available at gvSIG website http://www.gvsig.gva.es

I must thank the gvSIG guys for helping me out with my WALIS Forum presentation by supplying me with a pre-release copy. Implemented a work around in 5mins and had it talking to our SDI straight away. Anyone with a Windows Mobile device, its definately worth checking out and things will become more interesting pending the gvSig and OSGEO talks.

In other news, i am officially slack. But the good news is that i have been harassed by that many people at events and on email that i will begin making a concerted effort posting more regularly now. SO LAY OFF!

WALIS Forum has been and gone for another 18 months. Attendance was the biggest yet, with 820 through the doors. Highlights for me (in no particular order)..

• Tim trying to do updates throughout the conf but stopping after the first post. Hey, i never said i was going to!
• Harvey from Microsoft failing miserably trying to demo photosynth live. I feel ya pain buddy, i really do, but we had seen it all before anyway
• Mr Parsons with the usual tidbits of humour. My only feedback would have been tailoring another presentation addressing the “short tail” as 95% of the attendees were the custodians and advanced spatial users. Certainly from my point of view, addressing how Google is tackling this area would have been far more interesting from a GeoWeb perspective! Next time.
• Leaving a room of 100 people stunned after a presentation but then all saying what a great presentation it was. Hmmmm?
• Cameron not taking a breath, ever, throughout the 2 day conference. That man can talk.

After a couple of hours I seriously only found,

• http://zeus.pin.unifi.it/projects/wcsClientLite/
• on Globalmapper’s todo list
• Cadcorp SIS
• gvSIG
• Vague references to ArcGIS 9x support … vapourware?
• A classic Dimitri Manifold post
• and no hits on the long list of clients at vterrain.org

Suggesting users manually craft the requests is not an option

I guess this kinda gets back to my previous rants on this issue. We’ve got Deegree, Geoserver, Mapserver and quite a few other notable suppliers pushing coverages out … to where exactly??

It seems absurd how many people grab the whole SRTM/Landsat/DEMs in general just because “its easier”. After looking into WCS, perhaps they are right. Chicken meet egg, again.

Second bravo goes to Flamingo mapping components, a new (i think) dutch GPL mapviewer. I happened to stumble onto these guys’ Flash based WMS client the other day and all i can say is hooray! Finally a flash client which is separated into components, has a neat interface and is actually configurable WITHOUT requiring Flash CS3 just to change the stupid service URI.