Client-side vector-based internet-browser-embedded map viewer

[Rob Atkinson]

Any serious number of real world applications will require some form of
distributed spatial data infrastructure - the cost and practicality of
maintaining copies of every base data set gets out of hand, and if your
application needs remotely up-to-date data, a local copy probably means you
have a huge ongoing data management budget to arrange.

A distributed infrastructure requires interoperability standards (cf the
OpenGIS web services model)  and a three-tier architecture. SVG/Flash/Any
other vector format viewers need to be fed with the small piece of data that
matches the problem.
Current client side vector technologies are either demos that load a static
file or proprietary streaming solutions that talk only to a particular
serving technology.

The OpenGIS Web Feature Server specification will provide a baseline -
however middleware is probably required to handle negotiations with respect
to which server has the features, which style to apply, and how access to
the shared resource is going to be granted.

Mapserver provides a great service provision platform, and the interface
tools allow quite nice applications to be built around private data
holdings, but institutional players should realise that these are but two
parts of the problem and should be decoupled in the planning process - which
the mapserver technology neatly supports.

Regards
Rob Atkinson
CTO

Nicolau Werneck wrote:

>    Hello.
>
>    Kind of off-topic, sorry, but have anybody here
> ever worked with any of those map browsers in the
> topic? I have seen some flash map viewers, with
> scalabel graphics, layer control and feature search,
> but I've only seen applications for small areas... Is
> it reasonably fast for more detailed areas, say, the
> size of Portugal, with some 800 rivers, roads and etc?
>    I know there are other solutions for this kind of
> application... This flash one can't handle labels and
> symbols :Q
>
>    Well, bye! :)
>
> --Nicolau
>
> ________________________________________________________________________
> O YAHOO! GEOCITIES CHEGOU AO BRASIL!
> Crie sua home page com tudo em português - http://br.geocities.com
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