To create a new project, press Create in the section listing the projects. Projects are created by walking through a wizard.
Identification
Name
Enter a name for the new project. The name must be unique.
Description
Optionally enter a description for the new project. Used for administrative purposes.
Default language
Available languages
Usage statistics
Select this option if you wish to obtain usage statistics regarding this project, the layers it contains, and the public contexts that are created in the JMap Pro applications deployed from this project.
Automatically invalidate Mapbox tile cache
Parameters
Map projection
Determines how the data will be displayed in the client applications. Any data that is in a different projection will be converted on the fly to this projection. Note that changing the map projection of a project invalidates the layer cache. This can temporarily reduce the performance of applications.
Map unit
The map unit is automatically selected according to the selected map projection.
Display unit
The unit used to display map coordinates.
Measurement
Geodetic: Distance and area measurements will be made using spherical calculations based on the projection’s ellipsoid. Cartesian using: Distance and area measurements will be made from calculations on the two-dimensional plane using the specified projection.
Distance unit
The unit used to display distances (measurements, zoom levels, etc.).
Minimum scale
The minimum scale of the map. Users cannot zoom out further when this limit is reached. When you check this option the default value is 1:1.
Maximum scale
The maximum scale of the map. Users cannot zoom in further when this limit is reached. When you check this option the default value is 1:1.
Background color
Default color to use for the background of the map.
Default selection color
Color of selected objects on the map. It can also be defined for each layer.
When creating a project, you can either create a new empty project or import an existing project configuration from another source. When you use an existing configuration, you can automate the creation of the project’s layers and avoid reconfiguring everything in JMap Admin. Currently, only one option is available for importing a project configuration: importing projects from an ESRI ArcGIS REST Service.
You can choose to import the layer configuration from an ESRI ArcGIS REST service. JMap will import the project’s parameters, the layers and their symbology, the scale parameters, the extents, etc.
Select the ArcGIS REST option and click on Next.
ArcGIS REST
URL
Username
Enter the username to authenticate and log in to the ArcGIS REST service.
Password
Enter the password to authenticate and log in to the ArcGIS REST service.
Layers
Select the layers whose configurations you wish to import. JMap creates a layer in the project for each imported layer. The configuration of the JMap layer is similar to that of the original layer, but there may be some differences.
JMap supports the import of OGC WMTS raster layers.
In the REST service layer import interface, icons indicate layers whose format is not compatible with JMap.
JMap projects can be configured to support several languages. This way, each user can view the project in his or her own language, as long as the language is available and the translations have been provided. When a JMap application is launched, it can automatically identify the language of the user’s operating system and use this language for the project and graphical interfaces. This behavior depends on the options selected when deploying the application.
For a project supporting multiple languages, each text element that is visible to the users can be translated into each language. For example, you can provide translations for the project name, the names of the layers, labels, mouseover bubbles, forms, etc.
To enable multilingual support, you must choose at least 2 languages when creating or editing a project. You must also select the default language.
Languages
Available languages
Select the languages that will be available for the project. At least one language must be selected.
Default language
Choose the default language among those that are available. When you enter text in the various configuration sections of the project and layers, you must enter it in the default language.If the user’s language is not supported for the project or if translations are missing, JMap will automatically use the default language.
Afterwards, you can enter the translations in the sections identified with the symbol when configuring the project and layers. The figure presents the translation interface for a project supporting 3 languages.
If translations are not provided in all available languages for certain text elements, the text will automatically be displayed in the default language.
Vector tiles are a format of vector data that is very effective for web-based mapping. With vector tiles, the entire vector data of a project is divided into tiles, similarly to raster data tiles (WMTS).
There are several standards for creating vector tiles. Mapbox has provided a standard based on the protocol buffer encoding (“Protobuf”) created by Google (). Mapbox vector tiles (mvt) are supported by a wide range of map-based products, including JMap 7 as of the Jakarta version.
A grid defining the tiling is applied to the vector data, which is split into tiles. Each tile can contain the vector data (vectors) of several layers.
A set of tiles is produced for each scale level. Generally, there are 23 scale levels in web-based mapping, 0 being Earth level and 22 being street level. The vectors of lower levels are simplified (generalized) to optimize the display of the data, while maintaining a volume of tiles that performs well.
The vectors (lines, polygons) of each layer are clipped at the boundaries of the tiles. When a geometry crosses over the boundary between tiles, it is cut, and each tile thus contains part of the geometry. The map application reunites the vectors to obtain the full geometry.
The attributes of map elements are included in the tiles. This makes it possible to display thematics created on the fly or to display data in a map using attribute filters, for instance. This makes the data more dynamic and interactive.
The vector tiles contain the geometries and their attributes; styles are not included in the tiles. The information defining the styles is stored and managed in a separate JSON file. This feature allows application users to define styles dynamically, since the applications manage the styles. In addition, when the style of the data changes, it is not necessary to generate new tiles.
Tiles can be created in advance and cached; the server responds much more quickly to queries from the web-based mapping application, and therefore the rendering of the map is very smooth and performs well. In addition, the tiles can be used with for smooth and efficient rendering, especially in 3D.
Producing vector tiles with JMap
A JMap project generates three sets of data that are used by the applications:
1 JSON style file. This file accompanies the vector tiles. It contains the definition of each layer contained in the vector tiles, their style parameters, the thematics, etc.
A set of vector tiles containing the geometries and attributes of non-editable layers. JMap produces an MVT file for each tile. These tiles can be created on request when users navigate through the JMap Survey or JMap NG applications. They can also be created in advance and cached. The following offers details on how to create and manage the cache of tiles with JMap.
GeoJSON vector data corresponding to the geometries and attributes of editable layers. This data is sent to applications on request, by region.
Regardless of the procedure used to create tiles (on request or in advance with caching), the tiles are created in the cache/mapbox directory of JMap Server. In this directory, there is one folder per project (named using the project ID), which contains one folder per resolution (currently 512). The files of the tiles are named using the z-x-y.mvt code, where z is the scale level, and x and y indicate the position of the tile in the grid.
In general, vector tiles are lighter than raster tiles, but some factors can affect the size of tiles and impact the performance of the JMap Survey and JMap NG applications. The size of tiles is associated with the time it takes to produce them, their storage volume, the volume of data exchanged with the applications, and the dedicated memory of the applications.
Some factors to consider:
Number of attributes bound to layers: the attribute data influences the size of the tiles; the more attributes there are, the more the size increases.
Layer visibility scales: Establishing visibility thresholds for the display of layers is recommended when layers have very dense data. A good strategy is to limit the display of these layers to larger scales because the tiles of the smaller scales will not contain the data of these layers, and the time required to produce the tiles will be reduced.
Caching: producing tiles in advance and caching them greatly improves application performance, while reducing JMap Server’s workload. JMap Server can indeed reach its full workload capacity when several users are navigating through large and complex projects in the applications.
JMap server memory: influences the performance of tile production. Increasing the memory allocated to the JMap server can accelerate tile production.
Among the languages available, select the one that will be used by default when the requested language is unavailable or when translations are missing. For more information, refer to the section.
Select one or more languages that will be supported by the project. All text elements in the project’s configuration (name of project, names of layers, mouseover bubbles, etc.) will have to be translated into each supported language. At least one language must be selected. For more information, refer to the section.
Select this option if you want to automatically invalidate the Mapbox tile cache. Mapbox is used to produce vector tiles for some of the project’s layers and thus improve the performance and rendering of JMap Survey and JMap NG applications. Refer to for more information on this topic. Mapbox vector tiles can be produced in advance and cached. The following offers details on how to create and manage the Mapbox cache. The Mapbox cache is automatically deleted when: a layer is published, a published layer is deleted, attributes that are bound to a layer are added or deleted, a layer’s base filter changes, the spatial data source of a layer changes, or the project is deleted. The Mapbox cache is not automatically deleted when: an unpublished layer is added to the project, an unpublished layer is deleted from a project, minor changes are made to a layer (style, thematics, mouseover), or the order of attributes bound to a layer changes.
Enter the URL of the ArcGIS Server REST service (e.g. ). Afterwards, click on Load to show the list of available layers.
