Web GIS service component based on open environment

Abstract

Web GIS (geographic information systems) service systems provide various GIS services for analyzing and displaying spatial data with a friendly user interface. However, early systems don't support open environments and interoperability. It is difficult to access diverse data sources which provide each spatial data format. These systems also have difficulty upgrading the function and reducing the cost of developing Web GIS applications. We design and implement an open Web GIS service system based on the Web GIS architecture of OGC (OpenGIS Consortium). This system provides interoperability, an open environment, and a spatial data transfer format based on XML. In addition, it satisfies various user requirements and reusability of developed software because it supports Web GIS services as components. Each service component is composed of many objects accomplishing atomic service processing and cooperating with each other. Web GIS service components are designed with UML (Unified Modeling Language), an object-oriented modeling language for specifying, visualizing, constructing, and documenting artifacts of a software system. In addition, they were also developed in an object-oriented computing environment, ATL/COM and Visual C++, and provide interoperability, language-independence, and an easy development environment in addition to reusability.