Besides hardware, local networks, and transatlantic backbones there are just a few pillars which assure that the Internet and the servers provides the functionality and services we are accustomed to, namely the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP), the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (or content types), the identification of resources by IP addresses and host names, the Common Gateway Interface (CG), and the Structured Query Language (SQL) for accessing the databases. In many cases information is transferred in the form of the eXtensible MarkUp Language (XML).

The interaction between clients and servers through the Web will be introduced and architectural principles explained. You will understand the multi-tier (multi-layer) concept, its components, and its advantages. It will be unrolled that the GeoWeb is the combination and interplay of distributed resources offering geodata and services.

Relevant software packages in this field will be briefly introduced, so that the audience members get a helpful personal overview over the software scene.

In the practical work we will learn to install our own client server and development environment. We will see how easily a Web server (HTTP server) can be installed and administered. We will publish static HTML pages with CSS and JavaScript and then move forward to dynamic provision of resources. On this way we will get in contact with a Database Management System and its databases, touch SQL and load our own geodata.

With a keen step to server side programming we will see how we can extract the geodata in order to share them as a service through the web.

On client side you will learn how a mapping client, in our case based on the OpenLayers application programming interface (API), can be implemented. We will perceive that questions of licensing and availability have to be taken into account if we plan the outroöö of our own geodata and geoservice.

In the next part, you will get in touch with Web 2.0, the current state of contemporary web technology if we understand AJAX, i.e. Asynchronous Javascript and XML and its use in conjunction with your mapping client.

In a final step you will conflate client side and server side technology and applications. You will see how base data can be overlaid and enhanced with your geodata, extracted from the database, restructured in the application layer, transferred through the web, and finally visualized in the HTTP browser.