Frequently Asked Questions

  1. When was the Gisgraphy project launched?
  2. Why the name Gisgraphy?
  3. Is it possible to import geonames and not openstreetmap dataset and the opposite?
  4. How long does it take to import all of the data?
  5. Why the import takes so long ?
  6. how can i be sure the project is production ready ?
  7. Will the project go on?
  8. Who are the developers?
  9. What technology is used?
  10. Can Gisgraphy run on Java 1.4?
  11. Is it possible to only Import the countries I'm interested in?
  12. Is it possible to only Import the features I'm interested in?
  13. Is it possible to customize placetype?
  14. On Linux / Unix, I get the messge "Too many open files", what does it mean?
When was the Gisgraphy project launched?

It was launched in June 2008.

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Why the name Gisgraphy?

It is geography for GIS (aka Geographic Information System).

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Is it possible to import geonames and not openstreetmap dataset and the opposite?

yes! just choose the dataset(s) you are interested in on the confirm import page. If you want to import an other dataset later, a workaround is possible

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How long does it take to import all of the data?

It depends on the machine and the memory. On a core2 Duo it takes about 40 hours. the importer is useful if you are interested on an custom import(specific placetypes, countries, dataset...), If you don't want to run an import by yourself, because you are interested in all placetypes for all countries, a Postgres dump and a Solr dump can be found here. it will takes only the time to inject the dump into Postgres and copy the Solr dump into the solr directory(~1 hours)

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Why the import takes so long ?

The import is long because :

  • There are a lot of features to import (more than 42 Millions)
  • Gisgraphy try to do error correction to detect the correct ADM, and a lot of request is made to the database for each line. this is the "price to pay" to have a parent/child ADM tree
  • for each feature or alternate names imported, the fulltext engine is synchronized
The openstreetmap import take less time because data are pre-processed by me (length, middle point,...) to CSV. so no error correction is necessary.

if

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how can i be sure the project is production ready ?

It has been tested on several machines using linux, Windows and various JVMs. Gisgraphy has a high unit/integration test coverage. it is scalable, and heve no memory leak (

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Will the project go on?

Yes, I plan to keep the development going.

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Who are the developers?

Me and myself : David Masclet:)

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What technology is used?

Java / Spring / Hibernate / Hibernate Spatial / Maven 2 / PostGIS / PostgreSQL / struts2 / SolR-Lucene.

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Can Gisgraphy run on Java 1.4?

Gisgraphy is designed and have been tested for Java 1.5 and later .

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Is it possible to only Import the countries I'm interested in?

Edit the importer.filesToDownload option in the env.properties file. Set the country you want to download, then start gisgraphy, go to the admin menu=>run import . Or, if you don't want Gisgraphy to download files; set the importer.retrieveFiles option to false and put the files you want to process in the 'importer.geonames.dir' directory.

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Is it possible to only Import the features I'm interested in?

Yes, just edit the importerConfig.acceptRegExString option. Consult the user guide.

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Is it possible to customize placetype?

Yes, you can find some information here.

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On Linux / Unix, I get the messge "Too many open files", what does it mean?

It is due to SolR < = > Unix, you need to update the max numbers of open files on your system. See this link and this one for help.

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