Things have been a bit quiet on this blog on the MapGuide front, so I'd thought I start the new year with my current thoughts about what will happen to MapGuide in 2015.
MapGuide Open Source 3.0
The next release of MapGuide will be 3.0. This release has some really compelling new features that makes 3.0 a compelling upgrade. A "preview" release of 3.0 will be available shortly for you to try out. Also stay tuned for a series of blog posts that cover the new features of 3.0
MapGuide Maestro
As mentioned previously, I've decided that MapGuide Maestro 6.0 will be my final release. However, no definitive timeline is attached to this release schedule. So what that means effectively is ... expect regular "milestone" releases of Maestro 6.0 and when I feel that there is nothing left to do, that's when I'll make the final release and call it a day on this project.
mapguide-rest
The mapguide-rest project in its current form will be winding up soon. Most of the things I want to do have been implemented, and the limitations of PHP prevent us from taking mapguide-rest in directions I want to.
When I first announced mapguide-rest, I made clear my motivations about why I chose PHP for writing this extension. It was the only language target of the MapGuide API that works on both Windows and Linux with minimal configuration and deployment overhead (which eliminates Java as an option).
Then in November of last year, something happened in .net land: They decided to make it a great day to be a .net developer by open sourcing .net, making it supported on Mac/Linux and giving a non-gimped edition of Visual Studio away for free!
This announcement has changed my thinking with mapguide-rest, which is why I put the qualifier "in its current form" when referring to the mapguide-rest project. My current line of thinking with mapguide-rest right now is to wrap it up with a 1.0 release, and start work on the next version by porting mapguide-rest to ASP.net
I love the ASP.net platform, but at the time when mapguide-rest was first announced, it was still a windows-only option and I didn't want to make a windows-only MapGuide extension. This .net announcement changes all of that. By making ASP.net truly multi-platform, I don't have real reason to stay with PHP anymore. ASP.net lets us do many more things that are not possible with PHP (or it is very cumbersome to do)
- Better control of HTTP response output
- OData support
- Ability to create/run/schedule long-running background tasks/jobs.
- Real-time communication possibilities with SignalR
- Enabling better integration with other data formats, software and services by the virtue of the large offering of packages on NuGet
However, this vision of mine can't actually take off until we have a functional .net wrapper to the MapGuide API working on Linux, which will be one of my main areas of interest once the 3.0 release is out the door. If the stars align right, we might be able to see a post-3.0 release of MapGuide where .net, PHP and Java are all cross-platform MapGuide application development options! Wouldn't that be nice?
So there's some thoughts about what I think will be happening to MapGuide. Here's to a great and exciting year for MapGuide in 2015. Is there anything you'd like to see for MapGuide in 2015? Shoot in the comments below.
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