Title: A comparison of open source geospatial technologies for web mapping

Authors: Andrea Ballatore; Ali Tahir; Gavin McArdle; Michela Bertolotto

Addresses: School of Computer Science and Informatics, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland. ' School of Computer Science and Informatics, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland. ' National Centre for Geocomputation, National University of Ireland Maynooth, Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland. ' School of Computer Science and Informatics, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland

Abstract: The past decade has witnessed a steady growth of open source software usage in industry and academia, leading to a complex ecosystem of projects. Web and subsequently geographical information systems have become prominent technologies, widely adopted in diverse domains. Within this context, we developed an open source web platform for interoperable GIServices. In order to implement this architecture, 14 projects were selected and analysed, including the client-side libraries and the server-side components. Although other surveys have been conducted in this area, little feedback has been formally obtained from the users and developers concerning their opinion of these tools. A questionnaire was designed to obtain responses from the relevant online communities about a given set of characteristics. This article describes the technologies and reports the results of the survey, providing first-hand information about open source web and geospatial tools.

Keywords: open source; free and open source software; FOSS; geographical information systems; GIS; web technology; web architecture; geospatial web services; web mapping; online survey; spatial DBMS; GIServices; web graphical user interfaces; web GUIs.

DOI: 10.1504/IJWET.2011.043440

International Journal of Web Engineering and Technology, 2011 Vol.6 No.4, pp.354 - 374

Published online: 28 Feb 2015 *

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