Publishing Geospatial Data through Geospatial Web Service and XML Database System

Abstract

Technically the spatial non-interoperability problem associated with current geospatial processing systems can be categorized as data and access non-interoperability. In GIS community, Open GIS Consortium (OGC) geospatial Web services have been introduced to overcome spatial noninteroperability problem associated with most geospatial processing systems. At the same time, in Information Technology (IT) world, the best solution for providing interoperability among heterogeneous systems is Web services technologies. Geospatial Web services and Web services technologies differ in the way that latter are composed of particular set of technologies and protocols but the former are comprised of defined set of interface implementation specifications which can be implemented with diverse technologies. This research describes and discusses that geospatial Web services which are developed using Web services technologies can provide access interoperability among various geospatial and non-geospatial processing systems. In addition to access interoperability, making use of open and platform independent data standards like Geography Markup Language (GML), data interoperability can be achieved. Meanwhile, proper management of geospatial data necessitates use of efficient and optimized data management systems. In this respect, the study also illustrates the practical evaluation of existing solution for storing and publishing geospatial data as GML. Based on the practical evaluation of this research, coupling native-XML database systems with Web services technologies proved to be an open, interoperable and efficient solution for developing geospatial Web services.