Webservices, aka Geoservices

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Webservices, aka Geoservices

• The realisation of an SDI at the Dutch Ministry
  of Transport, Public Works and Water Management
  (VenW)

Wim de Haas, projectmanager
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Outline

• Aim of this presentation
• Brief introduction of the Ministry
• Geoservices
• OSS
• Historical perspective and user view
• Pittfalls beyond the usual suspects
• Conclusions

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Deliverables 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.

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Aim 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

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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.

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The 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

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Water-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

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Land-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

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Geoservices (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

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Geoservices (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

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Geoservices (3)
2. Requestor localizes data/service
Registry
1. Provider publices data and services at Registry
Find
Publish
Requestor
Provider
Bind
3. Requestor start service
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Geoservices (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
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OSS (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?

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Successful 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

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Outline

• Aim of this presentation
• Brief introduction of the Ministry
• Geoservices
• OSS
• Historical perspective and user view
• Pittfalls beyond the usual suspects
• Conclusions

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Historical perspective Gartner (2003) on Open
Source Applications
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Historical perspectiveOSS Real Benefits,
Hidden Costs
Open-Source Software
After Gartner 2003
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Political 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

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Costs 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

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Benefits 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

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Remember 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.

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The 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

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The 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

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Concluding 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

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Some application screenshots
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Implementatie 2
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Implementatie 3
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Implementatie 4
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URLs

• http//www.rijkswaterstaat.nl/apps/geoservices/por
  taal/
• http//www.rijkswaterstaat.nl/services/geoservices
  /basispakket/dtb?
• http//www.rijkswaterstaat.nl/services/geoservices
  /basispakket/grenzen?

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Questions?

• Wim de Haas
• mailtow.c.a.dhaas_at_agi.rws.minvenw.nl