Network for testing GI services
Anders Östman · DiVA (University of Gävle) · 2010
The use of standards is essential when building a SDI. Today we have a number of standards and specifications from organizations like W3C, OGC, ISO etc. In addition, the European Commission is specifying implementing rules related to the INSPIRE directive. In order to comply with all these standards and specifications, testing procedures has to be developed and utilized. Some organizations like OGC, develop their own suite of testing applications. In other cases, for instance for the INSPIRE service specifications, no guidelines for testing are provided by the EC. As a result, we have a variety of development initiatives across Europe, aiming to develop testing procedures related to SDI development in general and INSPIRE specifically. The Persistent Testbed is an initiative by AGILE, EuroSDR and OGC. Its aim is to act as research test-bed for collaborative European research in geospatial interoperability. The Persistent Testbed has now taken the initiative of creating a testing network. The aim is to coordinate the current widespread development of INSPIRE related testing procedures and software development, in an effort of making more efficient use of limited resources. In addition to just testing if a certain service complies to a certain set of standards and specifications, the network also develop other procedures. One such procedure is to integrate INSPIRE tests with the monitoring and reporting scheme as specified by the EC. Another development is related to usability tests, which is focusing on the user's perception of the services. These tests can also be used to test to what degree the INSPIRE implementing rules fulfill the user requirements. Current mainstream technological IT trends are based on web technologies. By moving desktop applications to web solutions, operational costs may be cut by 35% - 50% (13). Different blogs also report that going from in-house or outsourced web solutions to cloud computing may cut additional 50% of the remaining costs ((7), (12)). Although some of these reports may be somewhat biased, there is still a large number of indications showing a large cost reduction potential of IT operations. However, the GIS sector seems not yet to be able to deal with the new commercial offers of cloud services, such as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS). So we still have a large unexplored set of cost reduction possibilities ahead of us. INSPIRE is a European directive, aiming to provide access to and better use of geographical information within Europe (2). The implementing rules associated with this directive are based on the use of web service technologies which are direct aligned to the current IT trends and developments. The use of standardized services like WMS, WFS, WCS and CSW as well as standardized and harmonized data sets are technological cornerstones in the implementation of the INSPIRE directive. What we see today in Europe is a large number of governmental agencies setting up their web service in order to provide their data according to the INSPIRE directive. In addition, a large number of cities and associations of cities are establishing portals and other web services for the provision of their spatial data. Many of the governmental agencies are forced to do this, due to the legal implications of