The GeoTools 8.x branch started out as 2.8.x with a quick proposal to change the project version number policy. The major technical direction is the addition of "live" documentation using sphinx.

Usability Targets

Documentation

Our initial research into the use of Sphinx has gone well; and was able to provide us a website for the 2.7.x series.
Jody Garnett has ported the wiki Developers Guide and User Guide over to this format.

Additional help is needed to capture more of the code examples in Java files so that we can always include code that compiles.

Simplification

We missed a few opportunities for simplification in 2.7.x:

• Query - done in 2.7.x
• FeatureLock - done in 2.7.x
• Transaction

Research Targets

Application Schema

The work on Application Schema support by the AuScope team is wrapping up.

One thing this missed was the production of classes for us mere mortals working with Java code (rather than xml schema).

So the shopping list for java developers is:

• A FeatureTypeBuilder - that is able to produce application schema compatible feature types.
• FeatureCollection support classes to assist with implementations
• Something like ContentDataStore that can be used as a starting point

Geometry (Geodetic/3D)

We continue to have inquery into a data model for 3D Geometry, and more importantly geodetic geometry.

We looked at working with the deegree3 project on the java-collab list for 2.7.x and nothing came of it. As such I expect we will need to go it our own.

N-Dimensional GridCoverage

This continues to be a research topic, in particular to work with netCDF data.