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Title

GIVE YOUR PROPRIETARY GIS AN OPEN SOURCE FACELIFT

Abstract

Over many years companies have invested huge sums of money in developing non Open Source GIS systems which in many cases are providing an excellent service. It is unrealistic to expect them to discard that investment and sign up to some new technology that they probably don’t understand or trust and which often seems to be based as much on philosophy than on science.

However, as installed systems begin to age, the technology becomes outdated and companies are under pressure from suppliers to update to the latest software releases, which implies a cost in both purchasing licenses and modifying applications. In some cases these updates cannot be justified, in which case the software continues working while becoming obsolete as the years pass by.

Genasys presents a solution which both protects your investment whilst giving your aging system a shiny new interface. The old GIS system that sits happily in the corner can keep working as it has done for years, and the few expert users that have learnt to handle it only have to press the new publish button which sends the data to the Open Source Web Mapping application. This unlocks the data and allows non expert users immediate access to information that was previously only available on request to one of the diminishing number of experts that commissioned the old system many years previously.

Genasys will demo a 15 year old GIS application that has undergone the Open Source Facelift, liberating data via a Web mapping solution based on the FOSS4G software stack of PostGIS, MapFish Server, GeoWebCache, OpenLayers and MapFish Client. The system includes the implementation of Web Processing Services that make calls to the original server software.

 

Authors

Lewis Clark - Genasys