INTEROPERABILITY AND REALITY @ GEObit’98

Availability, Interoperability and Flexibility
Data, Systems and Organizations
@ GEObit’98

Frank HOFFMANN (GEOS-CD, M.-A.-Nexö-Str. 4, D - 01217 DRESDEN, Germany)
Katrin HOFFMANN (TU Dresden, FME, D - 01062 DRESDEN, Germany)
Yuxia HUANG (CAS, Institute of Geography_ LREIS, BEIJING 100101, P.R. China)

0. Abstract

At May 6-9th, 1998, on the new Leipzig Trade fairground the professional use of complex GIS solutions for public administration and the private sector has been demonstrated at "GEObit'98" together with two other application shows, the "Traffic+Logistics" and "Packaging & Materials Handling" events, where additional exhibitions and conference programs had been built around a central logistics theme - from packaging to internal material flow, complex logistics services and traffic management including new products and services from geoinformatics and telematics key technologies.

This paper focus on one of the new OpenGIS® key technologies, the development of interoperability for data, systems and organizations, as well as summarize up the reality of interoperable products and services demonstrated @ "GEObit'98" to inform the GIS community of "Brno_GIS’98" on status_quo interoperable technology reached 1997/98.

1. Introduction

The traditional Leipzig Trade Fare is to become an international marketplace for new applications of integrated geoinformation systems technology. Besides classical GIS fields of cadastre, mapping and environment, new target geomarkets such as utilities, transportation, logistics, telecommunications as well as health, tourism, trade and finance will grow very fast within next decade of information society due to future availability of geodata, interoperability between geoinformation systems and flexibility within geospatial service organizations.

GEObit’98, the new International Trade Fair project for geospatial information technologies has attracted attention both from Germany and from the international GIS community. Autodesk, Bentley_Systems, ESRI_Germany, Intergraph_Germany, SICAD_Geomatics, Smallworld, and other leading GIS companies have welcomed the focus on the broad range of potential new user markets and also the international dimension of this new geoinformation marketplace. The geomarket is one of the world-wide growing markets. It is estimated that Europe had an approximately sales volume of 2 billion DM in 1996. The world geomarket is estimated by about 5 to 6 billion DM with an annual growth of 14 to 0%. The actual GIS market segments are shown in figure 1:

 

Nearly 6000 visitors had used the opportunity to participate at the GEObit’98 in Leipzig, about 50 % of them came from regions more than 200 km far from Leipzig’s new geoinformatics marketplace, and by statistics it has been analysed that nearly 97% of all visitors attented with a clear commercial interest in that event, especially looking for geodata availability. About 240 exhibitors from 14 countries demonstrated their latest developments for geospatial information technologies.

GEObit’98 exhibition has been supported by The OpenGIS® Consortium (OGC) in order to promote globally new business and technology developments for interoperability between distributed data, systems and organizations, especially in Europe, but also to apply European expertise in further development of OGIS process.

2.Interoperability & The OpenGIS® Consortium (OGC)

The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) is a non-profit organization dedicated to the development of open system approaches for geodata access and geoprocessing. By means of its consensus building and technology development activities, OGC has had a significant impact on the global geodata and geoprocessing standards community, and has successfully promoted the vision of OpenGIS® technologies that integrate geoprocessing with the distributed computer platform architectures for enterprise and Internet computing. By means of an open and formal consensus process, OGC is creating the OpenGIS® Specifications, as a necessary pre-requisite for geodata and geoprocessing interoperability.

The OGC was founded in response to recognized needs for new geospatial & multimedial information technologies:

Actually, OGC has 120 members, among them 14 organizations from Asia, 5 from Australia, 32 from Europe, 64 from USA and 5 from Canada.

The term OpenGIS® is the highest level of OGC’s specification for geodata interoperability, referring to the ability of digital information systems to exchange freely all kinds of geospatial knowledge about the Earth, geosystems and geoobjects, and to run geoprocessing software for manipulating interoperable geodata distributed over networks. OpenGIS® summarizes the top level of all OGC efforts.

The OpenGIS® Guide gives the community of GIS users a very comprehensive overview about the future integration of geodata and geoprocessing technologies with the larger information technology domain. It provides for geodata administrators and technology managers an introduction to the way this integration will happen in the future. It can be found on INTERNET’s http://www.opengis.org/techno/guide.htm as the Open Geodata Interoperability Specification (OGIS) describing the new conceptual specification model underlying detailed software specifications.

The OpenGIS® Abstract Specification is a series of 15 living topics documented and published on the INTERNET with a standardized content, format, structure and functionality.

The OpenGIS® Implementation Specifications are the result of the OGIS Technology Development process implementing a first part of the Abstract specification for particular distributed computing platforms (DCP), actually, the first revision of OpenGIS® Simple Features Specifications for OLE/COM, CORBA and SQL.

The actual version 3 of the OpenGIS® Abstract Specification and the revision 1 of OpenGIS® Implementation Specifications can be found on the web address http://www.opengis.org/techno/specs.htm for public access.

The principle of OGIS-compliant interfaces enabling geodata and geoprocessing interoperability is shown by figure 2:

Figure 2: The principle of OGIS-compliant interfaces enabling geodata and geoprocessing interoperability [Source: OpenGIS® Guide]

By this way the OGIS provides an universal framework for software developers to create tools enabling the user to access geodata resources available across a network of distributed computer platforms and manipulate them by interoperable geoprocessing tools and services within an open geoinformation technology. This gives user organizations or different information communities the flexibility for interoperation on INTRANET and/or INTERNET. The realization of this new paradigm indeed will bring us a dramatic change in the geospatial information technology, using interoperable geoprocessing between data, systems and organizations, instead of using monolithic proprietary GI technology and geodata conversion with incompatibilities or even loss during semantics transfer of databases.

3. Interoperability & OpenGIS® in Europe

During GEObit’98 a special seminar has been provided by OGC in order to promote the OpenGIS® consensus process for Europe and to stimulate the European participation in OpenGIS® specification process. The GIPSIE Project (GIS Interoperability Project Stimulating the Industry in Europe) has been announced to stimulate further the involvement of European GI communities in this worldwide standardization process and to increase the competitiveness of European GIS industry. The abstract model of GIPSIE can be seen at figure 3:

GIPSIE is a EC DG-III funded project starting from June 1998 and will be led by Departments of Geoinformatics of universities in Vienna (A.Frank) and Munster (W.Kuhn) which manage the partnership between leading European GIS vendors INTERGRAPH (NL), LASER-SCAN (UK) and SICAD-GEOMATICS (DE) in cooperation with EC JRC (I) and OGC (US). It is planned to introduce the ideas of integration the European GI industry into the global OGIS process during 5 planned regional meetings (Info Days) within period of project time schedule for GIPSIE.

The main goals of GIPSIE project are:

  1. to establish an EC-based OpenGIS interest group to coordinate specification interests within EC’s GIS industry and to realize the communication channels with the OGC
  2. to identify specific EC-based GI issues to be introduced into the ongoing world-wide OGIS process, especially on traditional GIS fields like cadastre, photogrammetry and cartography where Europe has much experience
  3. to provide the EC-based IT industry and especially small GIS firms and organizations with detailed information about OGIS specification and implementation process.

GIPSIE has been announced as "open to all European GI companies or organizations", but nevertheless, we believe that it is still an EC-centered project which needs some further activities and support for truly interoperability standardization in Europe. Despite that, it is a just-in-time initiative and, therefore, very useful also for organizations, not-members yet of EC. The Brno_GIS’98 event is therefore a very good opportunity to broaden these integration ideas and to develope a common, but indeed integrated EUR_OGIS initiative, especially within Central and East European (CEE) countries, to be supported by future EC cooperation programs for these CEE countries. As example, it was estimated at Traffic+Logistics and GEObit’98 events that amount of investments for integration of transport and traffic infrastructures between EC and CEE countries will reach about 210 billion DM until year 2010. Therefore, the way and speed European GI industry will integrate determines the great geomarket potential of future interoperable geodata sharing and geoprocessing technology within Europe.

The synergetic effect of combining Traffic+Logistics and GEObit’98 together was obviously. Similar problems still exists between the incompatibilities of too many standards and defects in transport/traffic infrastructures, as well as the non-interoperability of many existing GIS datasets, systems and service organizations. To overcome the problems mentioned within globalization process, even a special "Chinese Day" was organized in conference program of Traffic+Logistics at Leipzig Fair. Therefore, it is natural, that next GIS standardization workshop of ISO/TC211 will take place in Beijing (China) in September, 1998. And there is also the hope that GIPSIE will play an important integration role between the joint OGC and ISO/TC211 standardization efforts.

4. Interoperability & Reality

4.1. Realization of interoperable Geodata and Geoprocessing

The OpenGIS® Implementation Specification will be realized after a step-by-step consensus process. As a result a comprehensive software architecture for open geoprocessing systems will be designed. Application programming interfaces based on OpenGIS® Specification enable true interoperability between geoprocessing tools of desktop computer clients and of network servers. The first truly interoperable pre-release, but public demonstration of OpenGIS® Specification principles has been realized at GIS/LIS exhibition (USA) in October 1997. Figure 4.1a) shows the model of this first public demonstration based on the OpenGIS® Simple Features Implementation Specifications published in 1997:

As reported by OGC Newsletter 2(1997)4 this demonstration realized interoperable access to INTERNET/INTRANET-based geodata in different geoprocessing systems from BENTLEY, ESRI, INTERGRAPH, ORACLE, where the research infrastructure of University of Maryland, as well as network based geodata resources from GTE as the acting integrator organization for participating OGC members has been used. The first public interoperability demo used still pre-release software components, but nevertheless, it realized the conceptual vision of OpenGIS® interfaces enabling search for and access to distributed on networks geodata resources, their integration within different geoprocessing platforms and communication between organization as information communities. Figure 4.1b) documents the experimental status of interoperability between Solaris and Windows/NT operating systems, and between different application platforms: three CORBA and two JAVA versions, as well as OLE/COM, C++, TCL and PERL realizations.

This first OGIS implementation made clear, that OGC is a very important integration community which demonstrated that component software becomes a reality, and shows how to participate in this dramatically changing world of interoperable products and services needed by information and communication environments of the future.

4.2. The status of OGC's "Technology Roadmap"

 

All organizations depending on geodata and geoprocessing need to evaluate, acquire, and substitute their GIS technology permanently. That means to determine the status of

It becomes obvious that traditional monolithic geoprocessing systems are expensive, use proprietary interfaces difficult to customize, and they are becoming obsolete in spite of their unflexible and non-interoperable geodata interfaces.

Therefore, the OGC approach of open systems technology assumes the replacement of parts of monolithic GIS with new interoperable components, but these components need a very careful design of interfaces between them.

This introduces a composition process of isolating step-by-step the functionalities of parts of old monolithic system and identifying the interfaces by which it is connected with other parts of the monolithic system.

By this way new components can replace old monoliths and evolve to a technological development for new clients, new server architectures and new server functionalities.

It is still a reality that commercial products conform to the OpenGIS® Specification were not available on the geomarketplace, but the strategic OGC partnership with the World leading GIS vendors has been demonstrated based on pre-release software components at the GEObit'98 in Leipzig. The actual status of commercial GIS products that officially conform to OGC Specifications as per May, 27th 1998, is shown at figure 4.2a), and updated information can be requested from OGC's INTERNET website: http://www.opengis.org/techno/products.htm .

 

Therefore, a more realistic view for availability of commercial OGIS products we can take from the OGC development process enabling the "technology roadmap" for new generation of OGIS conform and interoperable GIS applications.

OGC has determined some milestones for the approximate schedule of commercial software components that should conform to OGC specifications. Figure 4.2b) lists the OGC Agenda scheduled for realization of its "technology roadmap".

But it will be clear that, after definition of first basic services components like catalog services for online geodata resources access, more comprehensive concepts of services have to be taken into account for the open Information Society of 21st century as there are:

Year of realization

OGC's Agenda of "Technology Roadmap"

Other technologies

1997

Feature Geometry

Spatial Reference Systems

Feature Objects

 

Feature Subtypes

Special Coverages

Internet/Intranet Technology

Display Technology

1998

Locational Geometry

Functions and Interpolation

Coverage types

Earth Imagery

Feature Topology

Accuracy

Service Architectures

Catalog Services

 

CORBA

ActiveX/DCOM

Intelligent Agents

Software Engineering Tools for Interface Expression Languages:

C++, IDL, UML, IDEF,

EXPRESS

etc.

1999

Features Collections

Metadata

Telematics Domain Objects

WWW Mapping Assemblers

+ Other Specific Services

+ Other Specific Objects

 

2000

Semantics

Information Communities

Transport Domain Objects

 

 

[Source: The Benefits of OGC Membership, © OGC 1998]

Figure 4.2b: The OGC Agenda with its "technology roadmap" schedules

4.3 Status of OGIS realization demonstrated @ GEObit'98

 

Based on the OGIS implementation process realized in 1997 the OGC decided to cooperate with the new Leipzig GEObit International Trade exhibition in 1998 in order to gain a much broader support from the European GIS industry, as well as from the European expertise in geoprocessing, especially in academic research, and from Leipzig as the central (geo-)marketplace for East-West and North-South trades in the World. Therefore, it is late but not too late for other European, especially CEE organizations, to take part and join this ongoing integration process in reality.

As already mentioned, 760 exhibitors from 24 countries participated 1998 in all three exhibitions , among them about 240 exhibitors from 14 countries came to the first GEObit'98.

OGC / GTE / SICAD Geomatics

 

At the GEObit'98 exhibition the OGC made available the public demonstrations realized 1997 by GTE Internetworking. Its Distributed Spatial Technology Laboratory (see: http://javamap.bbn.com ) is leading in geoprocessing technologies moving software away from proprietary systems with large amounts of functionality towards a larger number of interoperable components which can be re-assambled very fast into GIS tailored to the needs of different customer projects. One of GTE's open systems mapping technology is OpenMapTM .

GTE demonstrated two projects: the OpenMapTM prototype of discovering and browsing via INTERNET/INTRANET interoperable geodata resources (see topic 4.1) and integration of OpenMapTM with SICAD Geomatics new Geospatial Data Server (GDS). While the GTE OpenMapTM technology was used for direct access to interoperable German datasources around Berlin region to demonstrate network-based mapping overlay in the first project (figure 4.3a), the second project was presenting the first public demonstration within Europe of interoperable GIS solution according to OGIS specifications delivered by GTE and SICAD Geomatics (figure 4.3b).

 

Figure 4.3b: Access to interoperable cadastral geodata via INTRANET [Source: GTE & SICAD Geomatics Demonstration at GEObit'98, Leipzig]

INTERGRAPH / SICAD Geomatics

In a joint demonstration the GIS vendors INTERGRAPH_Europe and SICAD_Geomatics (outsourced from formerly SNI since April, 1998), both members of OGC, for the first time realized online access from different front-end GIS clients, INTERGRAPH's GeoMedia and SICAD's SpatialDesktop (its formerly version is known as WinCAT-2.3), via INTRANET to interoperable geodata resources located on the new SICAD GeoDataServer. This has been demonstrated by interoperable OGIS interfaces excluding the need for traditional geodata conversion translators.

INTERGRAPH's GeoMedia uses open geodata interfaces for OLE/COM and OGIS/SFS (Simple Feature Specifications), standard access methods to ORACLE and MS_ACCESS attribute databases (figure 4.3c). SICAD's SpatialDesktop'98 uses OGIS/SFS in combination with SQL/ODBC standard interfaces (figure 4.3d).

The effect of such interoperable geoprocessing technology becomes obvious: direct geodata availability over networks, effective geoprocessing interoperability between vendor systems and allowing higher flexibility for organizations with heterogenous computing and network environments.

Figure 4.3c:Open Systems Solutions of OGIS for OLE/COM technology by INTERGRAPH's GeoMedia

Figure 4.3.d: Open Systems Solutions of OGIS for SQL/ODBC by SICAD_Geomatics' SD'98

ESRI & Partners

A lot of contributions for open systems interoperability comes from ESRI one of geomarket leaders in environmental GIS. ESRI provides open system technologies based on ESRI's Open Strategy, e.g. open platforms, open data interchange, open development environments, open databases, open application interfaces, and open tools for analysis.

At GEObit'98 new GIS technology has been demonstrated by ESRI in a joint partnership with its German and other cooperating European partners for Logistics, Local Government, Business and Tourism.

SQL

OLE/COM

CORBA

INTERNET

ESRI

IBM

INFORMIX

MAPINFO

ORACLE

ESRI

CAMBER Corp.

INTERGRAPH

INFORMIX

LASERSCAN

MAPINFO

MICROSOFT

ORACLE

SMALLWORLD

VISION Internat.

ESRI

BENTLEY

GENASYS

NETSCAPE

ORACLE

SUN

UCLA Datamining Lab

 

ESRI

LAS Incorp.

SPATIAL DATA ENGINE (SDE)

for spatial access to object-relational databases with interfaces

SDO for ORACLE-7

SDC for ORACLE-8:

using SQL92 for normalized DBMS tables

SDE-3.0 for ORACLE:

using SQL92 for binary large objects (BLOB's)

SDE-3.01 for INFORMIX:

extented SQL for spatial types & functions

distributed computing connectivity for OLE/DB strategies of integrating geospatial data with relational attributive data

network-centered and object-based distributed computing over INTRANET / INTERNET

ArcView INTERNET MAP SERVER

 

MapObjects INTERNET MAP SERVER

Figure 4.3e: ESRI's contributions to the OpenGIS® Simple Features Specifications implementation process supporting interoperability

These applications concentrated on new ESRI's Open Strategy which uses advanced client-server architectures and allows to make

geoinformation enterprise-wide accessible and usable without barriers to other organisations and to the World via INTRANET/INTERNET.

ESRI is the only one company which participated technically in all three implementation solutions for OGIS Simple Feature Specification to be implemented on distributed platforms (see figure 4.3e).

The ESRI open software architecture supports:

 

ESRI products based on client/server architecture and its software development is now shifting from spatial geodata handling to strong geoprocessing interoperability where the client/server architecture will communicate over INTRANET / INTERNET infrastructures (figure 4.3f).

Figure 4.3f: ESRI's approach for GIS interoperability by OLE/COM

The Spatial Data Engine (SDE) is the only solution of centralized IS-based management of geographic data that supports the DBMS products from all leading vendors including Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, Informix, and Sybase. ESRI is developing SDE in parallel with the technology developments of DBMS. New SDE products releases in 1998 that include the joint development effort with IBM to provide new "spatial extenders" of SDE to IBM's Universal Database and DataJoiner products, a new release of SDE for Informix Dynamic Server that utilizes the Informix Universal Data Option to provide an SQL API, and integration of SDE for Oracle with Oracle's Spatial Cartridge (ODC). The integration of CAD and GIS and interoperable data sharing between both in future will be provided by new SDE/CAD client from ESRI.

SMALLWORLD

This GIS vendor is member of the OGC and participated in OGIS implementation process based on its years of experience in object-oriented GIS developments: SMALLWORLD's Spatial Object Controller (SOC) and Virtual Database Interface (VDB).

Actually, SMALLWORLD has developed the so-called "Transport Independent Client-Server-Architectures" (TICS) with standard interfaces for Windows- and Unix-based platforms. SMALLWORLD is realizing further new interoperable interfaces conform to the OGIS specifications for OLE/COM and OGIS/CORBA distributed platforms (see figures 4.3g and 4.3h).

 

Figure 4.3g: Open Client Architecture by SMALLWORLD

Figure 4.3h: Open Server Architecture by SMALLWORLD

AUTODESK & Partners

New releases of AUTODESK CAD/GIS products family has been demonstrated: AutoCAD_MAP (Integration of CAD and GIS data), Autodesk_World (Integration of GIS functionality with Windows Presentation environment) and Autodesk_MapGuide (Distribution of geodata over INTRANET / INTERNET. So far, Autodesk is still relying on special translators for open CAD data interoperation with GIS. One of special solutions of geodata sharing by translators is also still present on German's geomarket, the CITRA interfaces by CISS_TDI (figure 4.3i).

TOPOL

The only one GIS vendor from CEE countries, TOPOL s.r.o Prague, demonstrating at GEObit'98 its latest release TopoL/WinGIS, version 5.0, announced their implementation developments of first OLE components for OpenTopoL to be realized now for first public presentation at Brno_GIS'98.

 

5. Conclusion

The need for interoperability of geodata resources, geoprocessing systems and organizations for decision making in academic, public and private comes from the permanent evolution of sharing and utilizing the increasingly important geospatial data already collected for about two decades and that drives business and analysis for local, regional and federal governments in research, planning and services. These organizations demand enterprise-wide access to and internetwork-linked integration of other organizations' geodata and geoprocessing applications. This integrated view can be achieved in numerous ways and with numerous levels of sophistication but, until now still connected with problems of duplicating geodata, geodata format interchange and incompatibilities in semantics translations.

Therefore, a new interoperability approach forced by OpenGIS® Consortium is in process of specification which will dramatically change the way geodata resources and geoprocessing services will be interactively searched for, directly accessed over and integrated by interoperable open systems technology in heterogenous, information and communication environments using distributed platforms over the INTRANET / INTERNET.

At Leipzig's Trade Fair GEObit'98 for the first time the implementation of OpenGIS® Simple Feature Specifications has been demonstrated publicly in Europe. Progress of OGIS standardization invites geodata providers, geoprocessing vendors and geoservice users to join this global standardization initiatives, especially those from CEE countries and organizations, in order to open the market for geodata, geoprocessing and geoservices - only then the vision of global interoperability becomes reality in the near future.

REFERENCES

  1. CISS TDI, 1995: Data exchange between Geoinformation Systems - A challenge for the Future (in German), GIS 1995, Wiesbaden.

  1. ESRI, 1998: Open GIS Consortium Mambers Approve All Three ESRI Proposals. Press Release, August 29th, 1997.

  1. ESRI, 1998: ESRI’s Open Strategy - White Papers on SDE/CAD Client & Spatial Data Warehousing. HTTP://www.esri/com/base/company/opengis

  1. FRANK, 1997: Benefits of Interoperability to GIS Vendors. Technical Project TOPGIS - EC INFO2000, Department of Geoinformation, TU Vienna, Austria.

  1. GEObit’98: Das Data-Warehouse für die Logistik. Marktmagazin Transport, Verkehr, Logistik. Leipziger Messe GmbH.

  1. KUHN, 1998: Open GIS in Europe: The GIPSIE Project. GEObit’98

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  1. NAPA, 1998: Geographic Information for the 21st Century: Building a Strategy for the Nation. National Academy of Public Administration, Report #98-01

OGC, 1996: Promoting distributed geoprocessing through cooperative technology development, partnerships and industry consensus. Newsletter of Open_GIS_Consortium, Inc. Wayland, MA.

OGC, 1998: The Benefits of OGC Membership. Leipzig, GEObit'98

OGC, 1998: OpenGIS® - A special Advertising Supplement. Leipzig, GEObit'98

  1. OGC, 1998: HTTP://www.opengis.com/public/abstract/specs.htm

  1. SMALLWORLD, 1998: GIS ohne Grenzen - Die Open Server-Strategie - Freie Bahn für alle Daten. GEObit’98.

TOPOL, 1998: OpenTopoL + OpenGIS, Press release to GEObit'98