GIS meets e-Business: Using standardized components interfaces to build distributed e-Business Applications more efficiently
Roland M. Wagner
Fraunhofer Institute for Software and System Engineering (ISST) Berlin/Dortmund
Emil-Figge-Strasse 91, 44227 Dortmund, Germany
E-Mail: Roland.Wagner@isst.fhg.de
Abstract
With the great success of introducing the OGC Web Map Server and the OGC
interoperability activities, the GIS world moves towards easy and quick availability with
Web Services. The ISO 19115/19 Metadata standards describe geo-information content and
services. More Services are being developed. But how do all these different components fit
and work together in the real world? Some experiences to solve this question could be gain
by designing and developing a distributed Geo-eBusiness web application for a German
State in a team of three OGC members. The main guidelines of the contracting body for the
design was to use as many suitable standards and recommendations as possible. This
approach opens a quick and efficient perspective to design the application. On the other
hand some new strategies are required above today’s standardized components to solve
resulting problems, e.g. multiple data storage, ID scopes, causalities or installation
processes. Therefore, the handling of designing in teams, interoperable interfaces,
development in teams in a distributed environment, usability and maintenance are covered
in detail in our paper. These aspects are described from different point-of-views e.g.
developer, provider and user.
Introduction
Since a long time, the public administration collected geo-referenced data for their
purposes. The Romans military knew their road network and the distances. But this
information was also relevant for private trade organizations to plan their business in that
time. Maps were published und distributed.
Today, the digitalization of public geo-information is more or less terminated. The digital
geo-data is being used in public and private GIS for many purposes. Therefore digital
processing is used for creation, integration and manipulation of geo-referenced data in a
broader use since beginning of the ninety’s. As in former times, the private sector needs
the public geo-referenced information but today as digital data for their purposes.
With the introduction of the Internet World Wide Web protocol and at the end of the
ninety’s wide bandwidth communication was achieved, which is the technical
precondition for digital on-demand distribution for high volume data. Other business and
juristic questions of e-commerce could be solved in the meantime. That opens a new
perspective for marketing, ordering and delivery.
Task
Public and private geo-data is being created and hosted in many offices with different
purposes and organizational structures at different locations with different technical
equipment. Therefore ”interoperability” is a key issue for trading public data.
The approach of a German state was to use all suitable recommendations and standards
for its e-business project to achieve interoperability and for future improvements. On the
other side, the solution need to cover all known everyday requirements.
Intention
An online distribution of geo-referenced data should cover all digital and analog
products, which are many ten-thousand items in the case of a state mapping agency or a
large data provider, which requires corresponding software and hardware solutions.
Specialized data-server components are necessary, because of the wide range of different
kind of products. Other components are required to cover search-, security- and pricing &
ordering-aspects. These components are provided by several manufactures and with
different software characteristics. All these components need to be integrated and used in
two main workflows:
- Purchaser workflow: search – pricing & ordering– access control - geo data
generation
- Maintenance workflow: add/remove of items
The mentioned functionalities can be separated into components. Some needed
component interfaces are already standardized by international bodies or in their internal
process. There are sufficient available specifications for the case of free data or for an
off-line ordering. In the case of a Geo-eBusiness application some more components are
required. The specifications in this listing were designed and implemented in public testbeds,
except of the Geo-data management service (GDMS). But all specifications are
published or will be published.
1 Metadata-Information System (MIS)
Search and retrieval of geo-referenced information is essential especially in distributed
environments. The OpenGIS Consortium and the ISO are working on catalogue
specifications and have released the ISO 19115 specification for meta-data. A suitable
OGC approach for a web service interface is the draft Web Registry Service (WRS)
catalog specification. Although the web service interface is being still discussed, the main
approach is sufficient for many tasks.
