GEOSPATIAL CYBERINFRASTRUCTURE SOLUTION: OPEN SOURCE OR COTS?

Internet GIS and Geospatial Cyberinfrastructure

Internet-based GIServices are definitely important components within the geospatial cyberinfrastructure. The goal of providing interoperable, intelligent, and scalable Internet GIServices is consistent with the underlying driving force of building the geospatial cyberinfrastructure. Then the research on building the well-performed geospatial cyberinfrastructure will pose challenges on the enhancement of current Internet GIS technologies. Internet-based GIService solutions are primarily two strategies, open source and commercial off-the-shelf (COTS).  From both open source and commercial-off-the-shelf development contexts, there are advantages and disadvantages demonstrated in the development of geospatial cyberinfrastructure. The methodology to integrate the advantages of two solutions while downplaying the downsides should be an interesting research topic.

 

The Geospatial Cyberinfrastructure Vision

The National Science Foundation is leading the research toward the cyberinfrastructure which is an unprecedented initiative to construct underlying and supporting facilities in order to advance scientific research, decision making and collaboration by integrating any available and useful resources. The cyberinfrastructure initiative can be implemented in Geography and Geosciences domains as well. The so called geospatial cyberinfrastructure is such a vision which will be used as the blueprint of the future geospatial technology in the next few decades. Similarly, the geospatial cyberinfrastructure should be able to allow the researchers to conduct high-end research supported by a variety of computing resources in a collaborative manner. The goals may involve facilitating geographic decision making, promoting productivity, preserving the environment, securing the homeland and advancing Geosciences education.

 

Internet GIServices and Their Roles in the Geospatial Cyberinfrastructure

Internet GIServices have been evolved from the rudimentary static HTML pre-rendered map images to interactive web mapping, and toward distributed GIServices. Current Internet GIServices are rapidly moving toward providing high-performance complex data and analysis services. This transition makes Internet GIS a perfect technology to create global-scale geospatial cyberinfrastructure. The geospatial cyberinfrastructure heavily relies on the advancement of Internet GIServices.

 

Open Source Solutions and COTS Solutions

Both the open source and COTS Internet GIS solutions can be traced back to the early stage of static web mapping. The commercial products, such as ESRI ArcIMS, have been widely used. Meanwhile, the open source packages also gain popularity in the last few years.

 

A Review of Open Source Strategy

Open source software development aims to produce computer programs which are free of charge. More importantly, the source codes are open to public. Internet GIS has long been an active area of open source development. Lately, open source Internet GIServices have gained a tremendous rise in popularity. The open source GIS packages cover from the Internet GIServer, GIS database management system, to GIS analysis tools. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) specifications work as the de-facto standards for the entire open source GIS community.

 

A Review of COTS Strategy

Commercial Internet GIS solution still dominates the market. COTS Internet GIS software have been extensively using the computing technologies, from CGI, ActiveX, Java, DHTML, to AJAX, and Web services. Commercial Internet solutions also allow flexible customization of interfaces and functions.

 

A Comparison

As for costs and development transparency, open source solutions prevail. Open source software becomes competitive for GIS vendors in terms of reliability and functionality. However, COTS software are still have advantages over the open source counterparts especially from the perspective of end users. The reluctance of going open source can be contributed to the relatively more difficult to configure and customize open source software. The technical supports, product liability as well as complete documentation add up to the reasons of explaining the larger portions of market share by the COTS solution. Given these challenges, the recent creation of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation could be seen as a major event for joint efforts from previously uncoordinated endeavors. A comparison will be given for the most popular open source and COTS products covering the aspects of system architectures, costs, platform neutral, OGC compatibility, performance, spatial data formats, customization and development, installation, administration, and configuration, web mapping effectiveness, spatial analysis functions, security and reliability.

 

The Integration of Internet GIS in the Geospatial Cyberinfrastructure

The development of the geospatial cyberinfrastructure requires the integration of Internet GIS technologies with other supporting components.

 

Current Practices

Current geospatial cyberinfrastructure practices are extensively using Internet GIS to deliver a variety of services including metadata cataloging, web mapping, GIS data processing, visualization as well as high performance Geocomputation and Geocollaboration. Both open source and COTS software can be used in the current geospatial cyberinfrastructure development. Take GEON as an example, ArcIMS is used as online mapping tool.

 

Challenges and Discussion

Geospatial cyberinfrastructure involves many computing technologies which will interact with Internet GIS. Integration should be a big concern. To seamlessly work with other components, Internet GIS may have to comply with international standards from both GIS and computer science communities. In addition, some emerging technologies such as Grid computing may give rise to further problems. The large scale scientific research projects demand stable, reliable, secure and scalable Internet GIServices. The complexity of geospatial problems and decision making will continue to introduce obstacles in developing domain-specific applications.

 

A Hybrid Methodology

Simply put, the hybrid methodology selects the most suited solution for a given task within geospatial cyberinfrastructure.  The COTS strategy has been leading the technical development of web mapping user interface, server administration and configuration as well as service security.  The high reliability of commercial products make them better candidates to deliver the most frequently used GIS functions like web mapping, data management, simple Geovisualization and analysis. The standardized and well-defined tools can be developed by commercial packages. However, some specific applications, and requirements (e.g. performance, interoperability, security, and reliability) would demand developers to go into lower level of development. Then open source solution could be selected.

Based on this methodology, a web portal prototype design is presented with specific software/tools. The design is feasible and applicable with all available technologies.

Figure 1 near here

 

The Prospect

The future geospatial cyberinfrastructure will promote the development of Internet GIS by providing both opportunities and challenges. Neither open source nor COTS solutions will prevail and they will continue to compete with each other.

Figure 1. A Web Portal Prototype Design Based on the Hybrid Methodology