Chaining distributed GIS services
Trias Aditya, L.R.G. Lemmens · University of Twente Research Information · 2003
The fast development of internet technology has motivated the improvement of geographic information sharing and now, the advent of web services enable GIS functionality to be shared and consumed in a distributed computing environment. Web services are loosely-coupled functions that can be executed remotely by users on the internet regardless the platforms implemented. This concept supports the technical requirement in developing the Spatial Data Infrastructure; in which distributed information and functions supplied by the providers can be integrated and distributed to the users as services. Of these services, a new service can be potentially gained by means of combining several services to achieve a specific task. This paper will present the scenario in developing the SDI as service architecture and solving a geographical problem-oriented with a service chaining approach. Here, the scenarios of chaining for national disaster management and for incorporating commercial services in the daily activities will be discussed. To improve the possibility of requester in investigating of the chaining, the metadata of services should deal with semantic aspect of the service definition. The semantic aspect is the highest level of interoperability in resolving information integration. It deals with the meaning of resources and their metadata. The metadata of a service contains information about input and output of the service. Ontology then is used as a reference for the input and the output. In such setting, distributed components within the infrastructure will have the same interpretation about the input and the output. Thereby the chaining, which is pipelining the output of preceding service to the input of following service, can be better examined.