[OSGeo-Discuss] standard for pushing data from GPS device to a web service

[Anton Martchukov]

Hello List,

we want to develop a system including a hardware GPS unit
with some wireless inet access that is able to push position
data to the specified web service where it may be stored,
processed and tracked online as needed. 

My friend has a commercial order on such a device, but since
I also though about similar approach for needs of our bike
club, we decided to unite and make the system as much open
as possible. 

We had no GPS/GIS experience previously, but after some
research, we found NMEA protocol that may be used for this
at some way, but it's proprietary and so is not suitable for
open systems. 

At this point, we only see just simple requirements for the
protocol:

1) GPS unit sends current coordinates and a timestamp to
webservice each time it was programmed to send this. The
protocol should not keep any state, so each message can be
queued and send as soon as internet connectivity is
available. Since timestamp is included in each message it is
not a problem to identify messages for a web service.

2) The web service needs to authenticate GPS units primary
for identifying given device, since several devices may send
their information to one web service. Of cause, ability of
encrypting transfer won't bother also.

Our approach now is to develop a new protocol based on SOAP
over HTTP, since we can utilise HTTP auth and SSL abilities
this way and we will not need to mess with data representation.
Writting WSDL with the data we need to pass from the device
is enough. 

Surely, we may not see all the meat here and possible
extensions and bottle necks in our approach. Or maybe there
is already a standard protocol available and we will just
need to stick with it and do not reinvent the wheel. 

So, any advices from the list are welcomed, since we wanna
make a standard and open solution for this. If someone is
interesting to cooperate, feel free to do it. 

-- 
Anton Martchukov                     http://www.martchukov.com
0xFC4FBF28  96BC 3DAB 231A 7FCC 4F49  D783 9A69 65C1 FC4F BF28
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