Realization of Component-Based GIS Application Framework

Authors:

Leonid Stoimenov, Aleksandar Stanimirović, Slobodanka Đorđević-Kajan

Keywords:

Publication:

In Proceedings of GSDI-7

Issue date:

2004

Abstract:

Increasing number of geodata producers and users have expressed the need for the integration of geodata from distributed information sources and for interoperable GISs (Stoimenov, 2002). The systems that own this data must be capable of interoperation with systems around them, in order to make access to this data to become feasible. The system also must deal with issues unique to geospatial data such as: translating data formats into a uniform transient data structure, consistent coordinate systems cartographic projections and platform-dependent data representations, and retrieval of associated attributes and metadata (Levinsohn, 2000,Vckovsky, 1998). Integrating geodata from various sources increasingly becomes important because of growing environmental concerns, pressures on governments and businesses to perform more efficiently, and simply because of the existence of a rapidly growing body of useful geodata and geoprocessing tools (Buehler, 1998).

By joining the trend towards interoperation and openness, resource holders gain the ability both to better utilize their own information internally, and to become visible to an increasingly sophisticated user community, no longer satisfied with ringing up, writing to, physically visiting, or working on-line with the proprietary interfaces of a host of providers (Miller, 2000). In this new environment, the interoperable organizations will be visible, usable and customer focused, whilst still maintaining their own unique branding within the portals through which their content is available.

Interoperability of information systems relies on bases of agreement that describe what is shared among information sources. Interoperability means openness in the software industry, because open publication of internal data structures allows GIS users to build applications that integrate software components from different developers. Interoperability also means the ability to exchange data freely between systems because each system would have knowledge of other systems formats (Buehler, 1998).

The paper is structured as follows. In the second part, we shortly describe related work. The goals of our research activities, described in the third part of this paper, are defining component-based GIS application development framework as part of GeoNis interoperability framework.

URL:

plone.itc.nl/agile_old/Conference/greece2004/papers/2-1-3_Stoimenov.pdf