Data handling¶
Version 1.0 of GeoCat Bridge supports 2 types of GeoServer datastores:
If you want to know how to set up publishing to these stores, see the configuration section.
PostgreSQL datastores¶
If your data source is a PostgreSQL (PostGIS) database, and GeoServer can also connect to that database, we recommend you to publish your data by referencing existing tables in a PostgreSQL datastore.
This way, GeoCat Bridge does not need to export the data, so publishing will be a lot faster, and you will not have data redundancy.
However, this only works for vector data (features), and not for raster data.
Note
Bridge cannot copy data into a PostgreSQL datastore on the GeoServer side at the moment.
GeoCat plans to add this feature back in a future release.
File-based datastores¶
If your data source is not in a PostgreSQL database, GeoCat Bridge has to export it to a file-based datastore on GeoServer. This is a slower process, as it will create and transfer a copy of your data.
Under the hood, GeoCat Bridge uses Esri's Copy Raster Geoprocessing tool to convert raster data to GeoTIFF (COG). For vector data, the Export Features tool is used to export features to GeoPackage. This means that most common data formats should be supported.
Note
Raster data of type GeoTIFF or ECW can also be published by reference, provided that the data is stored in a directory that is accessible to GeoServer as well. This is recommended for large raster datasets, as it will save disk space and time.