GIS COTS Integration in SDI Software Architecture: Galicia Region Case Study

1. Müesteraner GI-Tage ’03GIS COTS Integration in an SDI Software Architecture,a Study Case in the Galicia Region SDI R. Béjar, M. Á. Latre, M. Gould, P. R. Muro-Medrano June 27th 2003, Münster

2. Index • Introduction • Galicia Department of the Environment • CMA SDI Development • Service Architecture • COTS Component Architecture • Homogeneous views • For users • For developers and advanced users • Conclusions

3. Introduction • INSPIRE Initiative • Objective: Make available quality geographic information • Establishment of integrated spatial information services • Common standards and protocols • COTS approach for SDI implementation • Complex software capabilities that have already been tested • Technical support • Functionality maintained and improved • Standard-compliant commercial components availability • Spanish Region of Galicia Department of the Environment (CMA) • Problems • Incompatible data formats and information systems • Difficulties disseminating data among their users • Difficulties to find relevant information • Solution adopted: develop of an SDI • Following INSPIRE principles and recommendations • Using the available commercial software in a COTS approach

4. Responsibilities Forests Water use Disposal of waste Protected natural environments Galicia Department of the Environment (CMA) Consellería de Medio Ambiente

5. Galicia Department of the Environment (CMA) • CMA highly decentralized • 19 forest districts • Problems with geographic information • Difficulties to find the data • Problems with remote access • Different GIS software solutions

6. CMA SDI Development • Following INSPIRE initiative • Solve the CMA geographic information users’ needs • Give some effective steps in order to fulfil the future INSPIRE legislation • As a COTS-based infrastructure • GIS software offers capabilities already tested • Availability of commercial software licences in the CMA • ESRI’s ArcIMS, ArcMap, ArcInfo and ArcSDE • Oracle 8i • SAFE’s FME and Spatial Direct • COTS components are in some cases standard compliant or can be easily wrapped

7. Service Architecture • Chainable web services • Provide different data access standard ways • Map visualization of environmental, core and raster data • Access to the environmental and core geographic features • Access to raster coverage data • Metadata and services catalog searches • Use standard OGC web services  syntactic interoperability • Spatial data and metadata • Base for the homogeneous view of the infrastructure • Metadata included as an INSPIRE recommendation • All the data and metadata in a shared spatial database • User applications • Catalog search client • Map viewer client • Vector and raster data access clients • All of them customized and linked among them

8. Service Architecture

9. COTS Component Architecture • Oracle 8i object-relational database with the spatial cartridge (Oracle Spatial) • Stores all the spatial data (both vector and raster data) and metadata • Provide geographic information support • Spatial storage format built around OpenGIS Simple Features specification • Spatial indexes • Spatial queries • ArcSDE • Manages spatial data stored in different database management systems • Used as a middleware component to provide good compatibility with ESRI products • Used also to give an entry point for other non-ESRI components • Spatial management facilities provided by Oracle in order to facilitate data access by other software products or components • Metadata catalogue • Management, discovery, and access of geospatial information • OGC Catalog Services specification • Not commercial, but follows the SCOTS philosophy

10. COTS Component Architecture • ArcIMS4 • Produce representations (images) and to deliver content (vector data) of maps through the Web • Compliant with OpenGIS WMS 1.0 specification and with the WFS 1.0 specification by the use of connectors • Standards-based commercials off-the-shelf (SCOTS) • Spatial Direct 2002 & FME • Spatial Direct: Internet download of vector data • FME: spatial data format transformation • They are substituting a WFS functionality • Web Coverage Server wrapper • Built on top of ArcSDE • Offers access to raster data through a subset of the interfaces of the OGC WCS standard specification

11. COTS Component Architecture

12. Homogeneous view for users • Users at the CMA • will not care about the standards used • should not have to notice the heterogeneity of the software components • Perceived homogeneity provided by the upper level applications • HTML clients with custom-made graphic user interfaces • Built on top of both chainable standard services and non-standard functionalities provided by certain software products • Users perceive an integrated web application

13. Homogeneous view for users • Data searches • Thematic search engine • Metadata for each dataset found • Connection between data searches and map services • Map viewer • ArcIMS HTML map viewer • Connection with Spatial Direct download form for vector data • Connection with the Web Coverage Server for raster data

14. Homogeneous view for users • Client linking possible due to the metadata, the final responsible for the apparent homogeneity • The SDI services and user applications share these data and metadata • They have their own metadata (capabilities), stored in the database, core of a service catalogue • Relationships between the services and user applications and the spatial data they use

15. Homogeneous view for developers and advanced users • Use of standards • OpenGIS open standard interfaces compliant components • Allow syntactic homogeneity • Hide the underlying software products heterogeneity • Quality metadata • If created in a coherent manner and avoiding unnecessary duplicities • Relationships relations between spatial data and services and among services themselves

16. Conclusions & Future Work • Benefits derived from following INSPIRE recommendations • An easier integration of all elements in the infrastructure • Preparation of the system for its future integration in bigger initiatives. • Benefits derived from the COTS approach • Cutting down the time needed for developing and installing the system • The time devoted to the project has been spend mainly in analysis and design tasks, loading data into the database, developing visualization styles for the data and configuring and adjusting the software • Develop the SDI, form scratch, in a six-month period • Future Work • Multilingual catalog capabilities • OpenGIS standard Web Features Servers • Gazetteer Service

17. Advanced Information Systems Laboratory http://iaaa.cps.unizar.es