Abstract
With the advent of distributed computing and the increasing trend towards the reuse of geographical data, a new generation of geographical information systems (GIS) is currently being specified. The key characteristics of these interoperable GIS are modularity and extensibility, and they are composed of existing software systems such as database management systems, traditional GIS, statistics packages and simulation models. (We use the terms interoperable GIS and open GIS interchangeably, however Open GIS is a trademark of the Open GIS Consortium (OGC)). They can be defined in terms of generic frameworks, which facilitates both information exchange between participating systems and the addition of new functionalities. Even though the idea of defining open GIS is not new, it is crucial that the steps necessary to design such a complex system be clearly decomposed. In this paper, we propose a layer decomposition for the design of an open GIS. Each layer corresponds to a different level of abstraction, starting with the application or user level down to the invocation of systems services. In addition, each such level can be specified by the same set of concepts: operation, data and session (ODS concepts). Orthogonally, the metadata needed for the interaction between levels is indispensable to achieve openness. The declarative style of specifying both user interaction and implementation on different levels of abstraction facilitates the incorporation of new software components. Therefore, the framework introduced in this paper supports the design and the evolution of interoperable GIS.
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