A hybrid architecture of proprietary components (ArcGIS, FME, Oracle) and open source components (OpenLayers, OGR, QGIS, GeoServer) is common in many organizations. But it has its challenges. Data and map projects are hard to share between departments, due to proprietary formats and encodings. In this workshop we introduce you to a set of best practices and tools that will facilitate better interoperability within the organization and with external partners. Ground principle is the adoption of OGC standards, which are generally supported in open and proprietary software. Alternatively various plugins are available to support these standards. GeoCat Bridge is such a tool, an ArcGIS Desktop plugin which gets you, as an ArcGIS user, easily started with OGC standards and the OSGeo stack.

After this workshop you will be able to identify challenges in any hybrid data infrastructure, have awareness how to prevent and solve them. If you bring a device having ArcGIS Desktop, you will also publish your first map from ArcMap to GeoServer and visualize it in OpenLayers without touching a line of code.