The Software Architecture of CoGIS and It's Research Topic
Cheng Changxiu · Geo-information Science · 2004
GIS is evolving into a heterogeneous, distributed and loose-coupled environment. There has been a strong expectation for the GIS platforms and applications to support collaboration. But the existing GIS software seldom sees the powerful capability to make it. Referencing the development trends of the computer support cooperative work, we set forward in this paper a system architecture for collaborative GIS. Compare with N-Tier architecture, it puts more emphasis on the collaborative logic in every layer. Collaborative logic in different layers has different research topics. The main topic of collaborative logic in data service layer is to support concurrency access data under the environments of multi-user and multi-database, e.g. concurrency control of R-tree, spatial data phantom, and concurrency control on multi-user editing. It in business logic layer is to make resources in client and server use reasonably, e.g. load balance, message control, workflow control, and transaction management. It in presentation layer is to realize collaborative visualization, e.g. collaborative virtual geographic environments, cooperative mode of colony. The CoGIS is a new and important development direction of GIS. It is thus necessary to develop more methodologies and techniques to support CoGIS.