WSDL Web Services for GIS Applications with SVG Viewer

The Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format has its advantages in GIS applications for rendering and publishing maps over the Internet.Because traditionally SVG has been used as just a map viewer, without the capability for data processing and spatial analysis, its potential for GIS application has been limited.Security issues have been the main concern in SVG applications.Now, with the support and development of World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Web service technology, SVG's performance and functionality can be greatly improved and enhanced for GIS applications.

Traditionally, SVG maps could be edited and rendered using a variety of approaches.Once published, rendering is normally a client-side application that does not re-connect with the server.Because of this, information has to be released to all users, although in many cases not all clients are expected to access some of the certified and/or classified information.

Web Services
W3C's Web service enables decomposing the software into functional components that can be accessed and integrated through the standard Web Services Description Language (WSDL) interface.In this way, GIS functionality for data processing and spatial analysis can be componentized and further integrated to support Web GIS applications using SVG as the map format.This helps open up SVG to allow certain processes on data that needs to be secure (e.g.certain attribute data) to remain secure, while permitting freer passage of data that does not need to be secure.

WSDL Web service provides a way to connect the client-side SVG viewer with the server functions to process data, perform query functions on both spatial and non-spatial features and redraw the SVG map.By separating spatial and non-spatial features, SVG can only be a graphic format with screen canvas x, y coordinates.The secured non-spatial attribute data can be processed and accessed through the WSDL Web service.Such a query can be dynamic; the SVG map will be updated and redrawn by the service command on request.Using this approach, what the user can see in the SVG source code is only the x, y screen canvas coordinates as well as the graphic styles, without any attribute values.

Examples
Figure 1 shows such an example.Private parcel information is not open to the public.When SVG is used in this application, the parcel dataset is separated from the spatial features.While the SVG map is generated and updated in an ASP.NET Web form, the non-spatial parcel data is served through a Java Web service created by WebLogic 7.0 with MySQL database, which also supports the non-spatial attribute query.A qualified client can access the secured parcel data and perform query functions on it.The SVG map viewer only contains the spatial feature coordinates as well as the mapping styles.

Figure 1.SVG with WSDL Web Services for parcel application.(Click for larger image)

Figure 2 shows another example in which the SVG map viewer contains the ZIP Code polygons of northern West Virginia and Southwestern Pennsylvania.By selecting a ZIP Code on the map, the user can send a request to the WSDL Web service provider to retrieve the concurrent weather information while the SVG map will be redrawn to highlight the centroid of the selected ZIP Code.Alternatively, the user can send the request to retrieve the weather information about the surrounding districts of the selected ZIP Code within a specified distance (e.g.50 kilometers).The SVG map will be redrawn to show the result, however, there is no weather information inside the SVG source file if the client wants to check it.

Figure 2.SVG with WSDL Web Services for real-time data processing.(Click for larger image)

Dynamic data integration can be supported by WSDL Web services.Adding multiple feature layers based on a client's specification has been difficult even for commercial products for Web mapping applications, such as ArcIMS.Once the map service file is created, the user cannot add new feature layers into its HTML viewer.Figure 3 shows how a user could add any kind of spatial features into an SVG map viewer.Both the base map (county boundary polygon file in blue color) and the add feature functions are all supported by a series of WSDL Web services.

Figure 3.SVG with WSDL Web Services for dynamic data integration.(Click for larger image)

WSDL Web services can also support dynamic data conversion for integration.The client may have data that are not compatible with the data format used by the service provider.Figure 4 shows such an example in which the service provider offers the data and functionality that requires coordinate data in the UTM projection in Zone 17th North at a datum of NAD 83 in a specific and generic XML format, while the client has the dataset using geographic coordinates (longitude and latitude) in GML format.In this case, the WSDL Web service provider can convert the client's data into the data format that is compatible to the server's data format before adding the data into the base map.

Figure 4.SVG with WSDL Web Services for dynamic data conversion and integration.(Click for larger image)

Spatial data processing can be performed by WSDL Web services.Figure 5 shows such an example, in which new buffer polygons are created by accepting user specified spatial features (points, polylines and polygons) and the specified buffer distance.The provided service is created and supported by ESRI's ArcGIS Server functions while the result is in a generic XML format that can also be used in different systems, such as a stand-alone Windows form application as showed in Figure 1 and 2.

Figure 5.WSDL Web Services for dynamic data processing.(Click for larger image)

Spatial queries can also be processed by WSDL Web services.Figure 6 shows an example in which features in polygon 1 which are contained in polygon 2 are selected.The result is a list of feature IDs in polygon 1 that meet the query conditions.Figure 7 shows the result of a spatial data query whereby buffered features are added onto the SVG map; the result shows that only eight features are contained in the buffer area of the polyline feature.Note that one buffered polygon of the point feature is intersected rather than contained within the buffered area.Other query functions that are supported by ArcGIS Server functions (e.g. intersect, touch, etc.) can be developed in the same manner.

Figure 6.WSDL Web Services for spatial query.(Click for larger image)

Figure 7.Result for data processing and spatial query.(Click for larger image)

Conclusion
WSDL Web service will change the way traditional GIS functions are performed on the Web.SVG use in GIS is promising, as an SVG viewer can be enhanced and supported with GIS functions.According to an editorial from 2002, the future of Web service application in GIS "holds great promise for dedicated spatial service developers and integrators whose imagination will be the primary limit to the applications that can be built" (Ball, 2002).