Besides moving desktop GIS to the browser, another mission of GIS Cloud is to make map and geo data publishing as easy as possible. We don’t want you to worry about setting up a GIS server with commercial or open source software and have people maintain that. Creating a map and publishing it as map tiles or as an OGC service can be easy! Just upload your data, style a map and you are ready to go.

At GIS Cloud, we are working hard at giving you as many ways to publish and share data as possible. Here are a few of the methods we currently support:

• GIS Cloud map viewer
• Google Maps map viewer
• Permalinks
• WMS
• REST API

Publishing your data through GIS Cloud map viewer and Google maps has been covered in an article we did a while ago. In this article we would like to focus more on permalinks, WMS and the REST API. Those features are available in the application through the “Share and Publish” form.

Permalinks

Publishing a map over a permalink is the easiest way to do it: just copy & paste a link. If you want to share a map with someone who doesn’t have a GIS Cloud account then you’ll need to enable “public access” which is only one more click. This feature is great for those who just want a simple and easy way of sharing a map with someone; a simple use case would be delivering a map to a client without worrying if your client has specialized GIS software. Your project can be delivered in a matter of seconds to anyone in the world.

Web Map Service (WMS)

GIS Cloud has an embedded WMS server which can serve your maps into any GIS software that supports the WMS standard. The map will be rendered exactly how you see it in GIS Cloud. Use GIS Cloud WMS if you need your data to be accessed by third party GIS software. By using the Cloud you don’t have to set up your own server to enable WMS, we take care of the hard stuff and let you get on with your own business.

You’ll get a unique WMS URL for your account, and through this you can access all of your maps and layers that have WMS enabled. Here is how a GIS Cloud map looks like through WMS in Quantum GIS:

REST API

The REST API gives you direct access to your data through a standard and simple interface, compatible with a large number of both desktop and web application. This kind of access provides you with the most flexibility to integrate GIS Cloud with any kind of software or extend it to suit your specific needs. The software you’re integrating with could be a CRM or ERP system, or it could be your own web application that needs geo processing functionality. The REST API enables you to do much more than just host your data with us: it helps you enrich your applications with spatial features.

GIS Cloud takes care of security, access control and user management, and you get instant access to your data from anywhere in the world. More information on the API will be covered in an upcoming article. For now you can find more information on our platform page.

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