During FOSS4G2010 in Barcelona I had the opportunity to present an exciting new extension for ArcGIS Desktop we have developed at GeoCat.

We named it GeoCat Bridge, since it bridges the gap between managing your data on your desktop and publishing it on the Internet.

Bridge makes the process of publishing geospatial data as easy as hitting the Publish button. When you have your map open in ESRI ArcGIS Desktop, you are one click away from publishing your data and metadata on GeoServer and GeoNetwork.

A presentation and a screencast are available on the GeoCat website

Bridge creates WMS (Web Map Service), WFS (Web Feature Service), WCS (Web Coverage Service) and/or CSW (Catalog Service for the Web) OGC services⁽¹⁾ for your data using standard or GeoServer optimized SLD (Style Layer Descriptor documents) and ISO19139 formatted geographic metadata.

INSPIRE is becoming more and more a requirement for organizations to comply with. Bridge helps to create metadata, view and download services that comply with the current implementation guidelines and we will be updating Bridge when needed to support INSPIRE while it develops. Bridge has an automatic updating function to ensure you run the latest version at all times.

Since FOSS4G2010 we've been working on our website so that you can see what GeoCat Bridge actually does for you and you can try the extension yourself against our demo server.

Try it yourself!

^{(1) See http://geocat.net/bridge/supported-standards for details}