Title: Webservices, aka Geoservices
1Webservices, aka Geoservices
- The realisation of an SDI at the Dutch Ministry
of Transport, Public Works and Water Management
(VenW)
Wim de Haas, projectmanager
2Outline
- Aim of this presentation
- Brief introduction of the Ministry
- Geoservices
- OSS
- Historical perspective and user view
- Pittfalls beyond the usual suspects
- Conclusions
3Deliverables ADAGUC
- Open Source conversion tools
- Selected atmospheric datasets in GIS format
- Web service to demonstrate the usability of the
above to the geospatial and atmospheric community.
4Aim of this presentation
- To share experiences on the development and use
of OS Geotools - To give inside information on the practical use
of OSS in a central government, showcasing
Geoservices - To give some points of view on the mechanisms in
the OSS field
5Putts Law
- Technology is dominated by two types of people
those who understand what they do not manage, and
those who manage what they do not understand.
6The Ministry of Transport, etc.
- The core tasks of VW are
- to offer protection against floods
- to guarantee safe and reliable connections over
land, water and through the air - to ensure clean and sufficient water
- Rijkswaterstaat (RWS) is the executive branche of
the Ministry of Transport
7Water-based infrastructure
- Water-based infrastructure under Rijkswaterstaat
management - State-managed waters approx. 850 km of major
rivers, approx. 300 km of major canals North
Sea Delta region Wadden Sea IJsselmeer region - Flood defences 300 km out of a total of 3565 km
of primary flood defences - Water management structures 10 dams, 9 discharge
sluices, 2 guard locks, 50 navigation locks
8Land-based infrastructure
- Land-based infrastructure under Rijkswaterstaat
management - 3250 km of main roads (of which gt 2100 km of
motorway), approx. 1000 km with traffic control
systems - 14 tunnels, 7 road traffic control centres, 91
DRIPs, 51 Entry Point devices, 11 rush hour
lanes, 5 wildlife overpasses - Total economic value approx. EUR 25 billion
9Geoservices (1)
- Geoservices solutions facilitate communication
between departments - By standardizing on open interfaces
- Using OGC standards
- Design principle All applications will be
designed as a network of services - The motto Build whatever you want to build
guided by Geoservices, unless you have solid
reasons to go without
10Geoservices (2)
- Geoservices Open Standards
- Geoservices Architecture built on OGC
interfaces (WMS,WFS,WCS,SLD,GML) - Geoservices
- Data visualisation
- Data access
- Data discovery
- Metadata
- Current focus on technical interoperability, not
semantic interoperability - BTW VenW, so KNMI too, is member of OGC
11Geoservices (3)
2. Requestor localizes data/service
Registry
1. Provider publices data and services at Registry
Find
Publish
Requestor
Provider
Bind
3. Requestor start service
12Geoservices (4)
WCS support funded by NASA
netCDF
- OSS
- Mapserver v4.8
- GDAL
- OGR
- Chameleon v2.4
- GeoServer v1.0
- Deegree v1.0
- Mapbuilder v1.0
- Proprietary software
- IONIC RedSpiderWeb, Catalog, Enterprise
- ESRI ArcGIS, ArcIMS, ArcSDE
- Oracle Spatial 10g r1
- LizardTech
Still GIS friendlyness is our focus
13OSS (Thanks to Paul Ramsey)
- By definition software in which the code is
available for distribution and modification - A lot to choose from BSD, MIT, GPL, LGPL
- What makes some OSS projects successful and
others not? - Can we measure the success of OSS projects?
14Successful OSS projects and how to measure them
- A community of shared interest is what drives a
successful project - The software itself is designed in a modular
manner - The software is extremely well documented
- The software core design and development process
is transparent - The core team itself is modular and transparent
- IP rights provenance tracking
15Outline
- Aim of this presentation
- Brief introduction of the Ministry
- Geoservices
- OSS
- Historical perspective and user view
- Pittfalls beyond the usual suspects
- Conclusions
16Historical perspective Gartner (2003) on Open
Source Applications
17Historical perspectiveOSS Real Benefits,
Hidden Costs
Open-Source Software
After Gartner 2003
18Political hype
- Motie Vendrik 20NOV2002 government shall
stimulate the use of OSS and open standards,
pursuing that in 2006 all government bodies shall
adopt open standards - Succeeded by a statement of the minister of
Economic Affairs on 2FEB2004 new legislation to
lower the barriers for smaller and younger
companies to do business with the government
19Costs Internal maintenance and development
- DIY youre at the steering wheel
- Fun if you like it change management, release
cycles is more of an issue compared to
traditional software development - ? opportunities for OSS companies (packaging)
- Its all about creating trust both internally and
externally
20Benefits Quality guarantee
- OSS provides an excellent tool for keeping ALL
vendors on edge true interoperability is not
something written down in a white paper, but
proofs itself only in real production
environments - OSS fits the equation
21Remember Putts Law?
- Technology is dominated by two types of people
those who understand what they do not manage, and
those who manage what they do not understand.
22The not so obvious pittfalls (1)
- First comment on Putts Law
- A third type of people can be identified who
neither manage nor understand the technology,
whether it be OSS or Open Standards the
end-users - And after all, why should they?
- Why rebuild everything we already have
- Open standards may be working, but what about my
functionality? - A technology driven programme contrasts with
functionality driven users
23The not so obvious pittfalls (2)
- Users, management and IT have different
perspectives - Users are data centered, IT is services centered,
and management has a strong budget focus and they
all have different timescales - In RD environments end-users are developers too
24Concluding remarks
- Everybody can exchange geo-information via the
geoservices framework - OSS is not for the faint at heart
- OSS is not longer developer centric, but instead,
users are becoming more into play - After burner the only successful SDIs are
backed up by legislation European Water
Directive, INSPIRE
25Some application screenshots
26Implementatie 2
27Implementatie 3
28Implementatie 4
29URLs
- http//www.rijkswaterstaat.nl/apps/geoservices/por
taal/ - http//www.rijkswaterstaat.nl/services/geoservices
/basispakket/dtb? - http//www.rijkswaterstaat.nl/services/geoservices
/basispakket/grenzen?
30Questions?
- Wim de Haas
- mailtow.c.a.dhaas_at_agi.rws.minvenw.nl