In computing, the Open Geospatial Consortium Web Feature Service (WFS) Interface Standard provides an interface allowing requests for geographical features across the web using platform-independent calls. One can think of geographical features as the "source code" behind a map, whereas the WMS interface or online tiled mapping portals like Google Maps return only an image, which end-users cannot edit or spatially analyze. The XML-based GML furnishes the default payload-encoding for transporting geographic features, but other formats like shapefiles can also serve for transport. In early 2006 the OGC members approved the OpenGIS GML Simple Features Profile. This profile is designed both to increase interoperability between WFS servers and to improve the ease of implementation of the WFS standard.
A GIS software program is a computer program to support the use of a geographic information system, providing the ability to create, store, manage, query, analyze, and visualize geographic data, that is, data representing phenomena for which location is important. The GIS software industry encompasses a broad range of commercial and open-source products that provide some or all of these capabilities within various information technology architectures.
A web framework (WF) or web application framework (WAF) is a software framework that is designed to support the development of web applications including web services, web resources, and web APIs. Web frameworks provide a standard way to build and deploy web applications on the World Wide Web. Web frameworks aim to automate the overhead associated with common activities performed in web development. For example, many web frameworks provide libraries for database access, templating frameworks, and session management, and they often promote code reuse. Although they often target development of dynamic web sites, they are also applicable to static websites.
A Web Map Service (WMS) is a standard protocol developed by the Open Geospatial Consortium in 1999 for serving georeferenced map images over the Internet. These images are typically produced by a map server from data provided by a GIS database.
ArcGIS is a family of client software, server software, and online geographic information system (GIS) services developed and maintained by Esri. ArcGIS was first released in 1999 and originally was released as ARC/INFO, a command line based GIS system for manipulating data. ARC/INFO was later merged into ArcGIS Desktop, which was eventually superseded by ArcGIS Pro in 2015. ArcGIS Pro works in 2D and 3D for cartography and visualization, and includes Artificial Intelligence (AI).
JUMP is a Java based vector and raster GIS and programming framework. Current development continues under the OpenJUMP name.
The Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo), is a non-profit non-governmental organization whose mission is to support and promote the collaborative development of open geospatial technologies and data. The foundation was formed in February 2006 to provide financial, organizational and legal support to the broader Free and open-source geospatial community. It also serves as an independent legal entity to which community members can contribute code, funding and other resources.
Mapbender is a graduated project of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. It was awarded OGC web site of the month in 2008. It is used by PortalU and several federal states to implement the INSPIRE regulation. Many municipalities use Mapbender as City Map Services and it is used as the mapping framework for online cycle route planners.
JTS Topology Suite is an open-source Java software library that provides an object model for Euclidean planar linear geometry together with a set of fundamental geometric functions. JTS is primarily intended to be used as a core component of vector-based geomatics software such as geographical information systems. It can also be used as a general-purpose library providing algorithms in computational geometry.
MapInfo Pro is a desktop geographic information system (GIS) software product produced by Precisely and used for mapping and location analysis. MapInfo Pro allows users to visualize, analyze, edit, interpret, understand and output data to reveal relationships, patterns, and trends. MapInfo Pro allows users to explore spatial data within a dataset, symbolize features, and create maps.
ArcGIS Server is the core server geographic information system (GIS) software made by Esri. ArcGIS Server is used for creating and managing GIS Web services, applications, and data. ArcGIS Server is typically deployed on-premises within the organization’s service-oriented architecture (SOA) or off-premises in a cloud computing environment.
Geospatial metadata is a type of metadata applicable to geographic data and information. Such objects may be stored in a geographic information system (GIS) or may simply be documents, data-sets, images or other objects, services, or related items that exist in some other native environment but whose features may be appropriate to describe in a (geographic) metadata catalog.
OpenLayers is an open-source JavaScript library for displaying map data in web browsers as slippy maps. It provides an API for building rich web-based geographic applications similar to Google Maps and Bing Maps.
A Web mapping or an online mapping is the process of using the maps delivered by geographic information systems (GIS) on the Internet, more specifically in the World Wide Web (WWW). A web map or an online map is both served and consumed, thus web mapping is more than just web cartography, it is a service by which consumers may choose what the map will show. Web GIS emphasizes geodata processing aspects more involved with design aspects such as data acquisition and server software architecture such as data storage and algorithms, than it does the end-user reports themselves.
A spatial data infrastructure (SDI) is a data infrastructure implementing a framework of geographic data, metadata, users and tools that are interactively connected in order to use spatial data in an efficient and flexible way. Another definition is "the technology, policies, standards, human resources, and related activities necessary to acquire, process, distribute, use, maintain, and preserve spatial data".
Distributed GIS refers to GI Systems that do not have all of the system components in the same physical location. This could be the processing, the database, the rendering or the user interface. It represents a special case of distributed computing, with examples of distributed systems including web-based GIS and Mobile GIS. Distribution of resources provides corporate and enterprise-based models for GIS. Distributed GIS permits a shared services model, including data fusion based on Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) web services. Distributed GIS technology enables modern online mapping systems, Location-based services (LBS), web-based GIS and numerous map-enabled applications. Other applications include transportation, logistics, utilities, farm / agricultural information systems, real-time environmental information systems and the analysis of the movement of people. In terms of data, the concept has been extended to include volunteered geographical information. Distributed processing allows improvements to the performance of spatial analysis through the use of techniques such as parallel processing.
The Open Geospatial Consortium Web Coverage Service Interface Standard (WCS) defines Web-based retrieval of coverages – that is, digital geospatial information representing space/time-varying phenomena.
Tile Map Service or TMS, is a specification for tiled web maps, developed by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. The definition generally requires a URI structure which attempts to fulfill REST principles. The TMS protocol fills a gap between the very simple standard used by OpenStreetMap and the complexity of the Web Map Service standard, providing simple urls to tiles while also supporting alternate spatial referencing system.
SpatiaLite is a spatial extension to SQLite, providing vector geodatabase functionality. It is similar to PostGIS, Oracle Spatial, and SQL Server with spatial extensions, although SQLite/SpatiaLite aren't based on client-server architecture: they adopt a simpler personal architecture. i.e. the whole SQL engine is directly embedded within the application itself: a complete database simply is an ordinary file which can be freely copied and transferred from one computer/OS to a different one without any special precaution.
WorldMap is a web platform for creating, displaying, analyzing, and searching spatial data and other data forms across multiple disciplines.
