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Open Geospatial Datastore Interface (OGDI): A geospatial data infrastructure solution

Gilles Clément and Christian Larouche
Global Geomatics Inc. 1600, St.Martin Blvd. East,Tower A,
Suite 650, Laval, Quebec, Canada, H7G 4R8
tel.: (450) 668-4949, fax: (450) 668-2822,
Email: gc@globalgeo.com

Abstract
One of the main problems in today's spatial or geographic information management framework is geospatial data conversion and integration. Very often, GIS developers and users need to import geospatial data from different sources. This task has proven to be difficult and time consuming. Industry experts believe that 60% to 85% of the total cost of implementing a GIS is data conversion. Geospatial data products are offered in a large variety of different and incompatible formats, possibly in different coordinate systems or cartographic projections. Typically suppliers have developed versions of geospatial data products for several software packages.

Geospatial data format standardization is one solution to this problem. However, standardization efforts alone will not solve the geospatial data conversion and integration problem by itself. This paper proposes a solution called Open Geospatial Datastore Interface (OGDI) to leverage and to accelerate this standardization effort. OGDI uses a client/server architecture to facilitate the dissemination of geospatial data products over the Internet or a corporate Intranet and an adapter-oriented approach to facilitate access to several geospatial data products and formats.

OGDI provides a solution for some of the most difficult geospatial data integration problems. These solutions include:

• conversion of various formats into a uniform transient data structure
• adjustment of coordinate systems and cartographic projections
• retrieval of metadata, geometric and attributes data
• access to a growing number of geospatial data products and formats and
• use of the Internet as a medium to distribute geospatial data products.

Use of the OGDI-based technology through pure html and simple Java applications working with main Internet browsers and through plug-ins working with popular GIS packages will be demonstrated, highlighting the direct access to several geospatial data formats such as Shapefile, GeoTIFF, MidMif, MrSID and DIGEST raster and vector products.



Open Geospatial Datastore Interface (OGDI)

1. Introduction
The geomatics industry has grown continuously over the last two decades, and the number of application domains in which Geographic Information System (GIS) and geospatial information are used has increased every year. However, growth in the industry has not lived up to the predictions made 10 years ago, especially compared with that of other information technologies such as Internet, Office Automation or Sales Automation.

The major reasons for slow growth are the lack of digital geospatial data and its high cost, the geospatial data barrier, problems integrating GIS into existing systems, and the complexity of existing GIS software [Larouche et al. 1996]. The geospatial data barrier is probably the most significant problem: geospatial data products are offered in a large variety of different and incompatible formats, many using different coordinate systems or cartographic projections.

In order to leverage on the standardization efforts and to provide a solution to the geospatial data integration problem, the Department of National Defence (DND) of Canada and Global Geomatics Inc have developed the Open Geospatial Datastore Interface (OGDI). OGDI is an application programming interface (API) that sits between a GIS software package and various geospatial data products and, using a standardized access method, provides solutions to some of the most difficult geospatial data integration problems. OGDI source code has been contributed to the public domain, in order to improve the interoperability of GIS software.

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