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jcothran
Joined: 24 Feb 2025
Posts: 176
Location: Columbia, SC
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| Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2025 9:41 pm Post subject: Technology Soup - a review of current tools |
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Technology Soup - a review of current tools
We've found the following technology soup to be fairly effective in moving forward with developing solutions to our data management and product development issues. We strive to use broad based open source solutions with active communities where possible so that we can share our development efforts and reuse existing solutions without regard to vendor lock-in or licensing issues. All of the components below are open source projects.
The following links list the main site for the technology item followed by a link to posts made on the related community bulletin board.
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PostgreSQL
http://www.postgresql.org/
http://www.carocoops.org/bb/viewforum.php?f=27
An open source relational database which most closely trails the leading industrial offerings of database vendors like Oracle.
A relational database management system (RDBMS) is a program that lets you create, update, and administer a relational database. An RDBMS takes Structured Query Language (SQL) statements entered by a user or contained in an application program and creates, updates, or provides access to the database.
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PostGIS
http://postgis.refractions.net/
http://www.carocoops.org/bb/viewforum.php?f=16
PostGIS adds support for geographic objects to the PostgreSQL object-relational database. In effect, PostGIS "spatially enables" the PostgreSQL server, allowing it to be used as a backend spatial database for geographic information systems (GIS), much like ESRI's SDE or Oracle's Spatial extension.
Nothing too intimidating here - just a batch of system functions which you run against your PostgreSQL database to enable certain geometric datatypes which use index functions better suited to spatial entry and search.
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MapServer GIS
http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/
http://www.carocoops.org/bb/viewforum.php?f=26
A GIS (geographic information system) enables you to envision the geographic aspects of a body of data. The most convenient features being the ability to overlay geographic data in layers and selectively view, pan and zoom on layers of interest. We have further adapted this GIS with an animation applet called 'Anis' http://www.carocoops.org/bb/viewtopic.php?t=171 which allows the user to apply an animation to a selected time range for the data layers of interest.
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DMSolutions
http://www.dmsolutions.on.ca/
This is an open source oriented Canadian company which has enhanced the MapServer GIS greatly with developer toolkits like Maplab http://www.dmsolutions.on.ca/techserv/maplab.html and Chameleon http://www.dmsolutions.on.ca/techserv/chameleon.html They have a nice gallery of MapServer GIS solutions which they have done at http://www.dmsolutions.on.ca/solutions/liveapps.html
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Open GIS Consortium (OGC)
http://www.opengis.org/
http://www.carocoops.org/bb/viewtopic.php?t=155&highlight;=opengis
http://www.carocoops.org/bb/viewtopic.php?t=151&highlight;=opengis
| Quote: |
The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) is a member-driven, non-profit international trade association that is leading the development of geoprocessing interoperability computing standards. OGC works with government, private industry, and academia to create open and extensible software application programming interfaces for geographic information systems (GIS) and other mainstream technologies.
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The primary role that we appreciate the OGC for is helping to define GIS metadata and data transport protocols that are open standards based. While the underlying application technology may be GIS oriented, the metadata and data transport proposals and specifications are applicable across a wide domain of technical issues including those addressed within the OOS community.
The current OGC specifications of particular interest are WMS (Web Mapping Service) http://www.opengis.org/docs/01-047r2.pdf which allows GIS to exchange data at the representation(image) level and WCS (Web Coverage Service) http://www.opengis.org/docs/03-065r6.pdf which allows GIS to exchange data at the lowest detail(record) level. Also of interest is SensorML http://vast.uah.edu/SensorML/OGC-02-026_SensorML_0.07r4.pdf which is a markup language for the tracking, exchange and administration of sensor information.
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Zope/Plone
http://www.zope.org
http://www.plone.org
http://www.carocoops.org/bb/viewforum.php?f=42
| Quote: |
Zope is a leading open source application server, specializing in content management, portals, and custom applications. Zope enables teams to collaborate in the creation and management of dynamic web-based business applications such as intranets and portals.
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Zope came first as an object oriented, all-in-one(web server, object oriented database, applications environment) through the web applications framework created in Python and supporting both Python and Perl scripts. Plone is an extension of Zope to better define Zope as a CMS (Content Management System) / CMF (Content Management Framework). If you are thinking about giving this a try, start with the Plone install as it includes Zope installation as part of its base. Definitely worth a look into just to appreciate the design and all inclusive application framework approach.
This technology has a lot to recommend in that a lot of common application considerations (user authentication and security, object caching, workflows) are already built into the system or available as free products which have been developed by the community. It uses its own web server and object oriented database as the install default, although developers can modify their instance to use Apache and a relational database of choice with limitations on framework specific functionality. On the downside(like a lot of open source development), the documentation still needs a lot of work(especially with Plone).
While I like Zope/Plone a lot, I have held off from using it for basically the same reasons listed in the following post :
http://www.carocoops.org/misc/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=124 see 'Zope/Plone caveats'
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Wiki
Another variation on the Content Management System(CMS) theme is the use of one of a variety of wiki's which allow for dynamic user development of web page content. Generally speaking Wiki's are a set of CGI scripts which run against your existing web server and database, providing a framework for users to dynamically add and edit webpage content.
Quickiwiki, Swiki, Twiki, Zwiki and the Plone Wars Wiki as a PIM and Collaborative Content Tool
http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/apr03/mattison.shtml
Gomoos currently uses a Twiki so that would probably be our current preference as well for a wiki based CMS
http://twiki.org/
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The above technologies represent a good starting point for what we do.
Language choice: We tend to find perl and PHP (PHP being a close cousin of perl) good languages for quick initial development with Java good for processes which might need optimization for multi-threading and Python good for object oriented systems. MapServer GIS is PHP oriented and Zope/Plone is Python oriented.
For SEA-COOS (Southeast Atlantic Coastal Ocean Observing System http://www.seacoos.org) the following products represent a combination of the above products combined with group discussion on variable representation within a netCDF file on a variable by variable basis.
Coastal wind observations product http://www.seacoos.org/seacoos/Folder.Products/Folder.MergedObs/Document.CoastalWind
Bathymetry, Current, & Sea Surface Height model product http://www.seacoos.org/seacoos/Folder.Products/Folder.BlendedMods/Document.BathymetryCurrentSeaSurfaceHeight
Note that these products are collected from institution and agency partners and that the individual data points are queryable to determine the origin of the data.
Seacoos should be providing documentation shortly of a Seacoos netCDF convention which we are using to move forward in our variable declaration and assimilation of these variables into the PostgreSQL relational database with the combined results then presented via the MapServer GIS. This GIS presentation is couched within the content panel of the Seacoos Zope/Plone portal. An example of the necessary netCDF file format can be seen at the following provider site http://seacoos.marine.usf.edu/cgi-bin/nph-dods/data/seacoos_rt/
Our current preferences for file formats are netCDF for in situ data, HDF for remote sensing data(images) and XML as a lowest common denominator interchange format. Also note the operational focus on the nearest to real-time products in the rawest(least quality controlled) form with the option to retain an archival research stream derived from the real-time view.
==Odds&Ends;========
Also to be considered are the various ongoing metadata markup languages and table schemas:
GML (Geographic Markup Language http://gislounge.com/ucon/ucgmlintro.shtml) can be merged with SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics http://www.adobe.com/svg/demos/main.html) or other resources to produce novel browser based displays.
EML (Ecological Markup Language http://knb.ecoinformatics.org/software/eml/ )
Various data schemas listed at the GCE-LTER project http://gce-lter.marsci.uga.edu/lter/research/research.htm see the 'Database Designs' links
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We're also running a listserv with discussion on remote sensing(and a hodgepodge of other topics as well) at http://caro-coops.org/cgi-bin/wilma/remotesensing
the link to the product described by this listserv is
http://nautilus.baruch.sc.edu/rs/
Instructions to join the listserv
* create a blank email message
* address it to majordomo@caro-coops.org
* no subject is required
* put only the following two words as the text of your message
subscribe remotesensing
* click send
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also of interest is the following SURA/SCOOP interoperability site and discussion board
http://twiki.sura.org/bin/view/Main/WebHome
and as you've seen we try to reference a lot of documentation on our bulletin board at http://www.carocoops.org/bb , feel free to post here as well. |
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