International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Vol XXXV, Part B4. Istanbul 2004 
organizational "spatial data islands." Perhaps not 
coincidently, the open GIS movement was spawned shortly 
after the arrival of the first all-relational models capable of 
storing both spatial and attribute data in a relational database 
when standards organizations, such as the Open GIS 
Consortium (OGC), the International Organization for 
Standardization, and the U.S. Federal Geographic Data 
Committee, began promoting the idea of data sharing through 
spatial data standards. The early work of these organizations 
was focused on sharing simple spatial features in a relational 
database, thereby enabling interoperability between the 
commercial GIS vendors. OGC, an international industry 
consortium of private companies, government agencies, and 
universities, published an open spatial standard called the 
Simple Features Specification. To fully realize the capability 
and benefits of geographic information and GIS technology, 
spatial data needs to be shared and systems need to be 
interoperable. GIS technology provides the framework for a 
shared spatial data infrastructure and a distributed 
architecture. It is very important that a GIS product has 
developed its products based on open standards to ensure a 
high level of interoperability across platforms, databases, 
development languages, and applications. The GIS 
community in general has been pursuing open standards and 
interoperability for many years. Approachs listed below play 
a significant role in GIS interoperability (ESRI. Summer 
2003). 
° Data Converters (DLG, TIGER, MOSS, GIRAS, 
IGDS) 
e Standart Interchange Formats (SDTS, DXF,GML) 
e Open File Formats (VPF, Shapefiles, DGN) 
e Direct read application programming interface 
(ArcSDE API, CAD reader, ArcSDE CAD Client) 
e Common feature in a DBMS (OGC Simple Feature 
Specification for SQL) 
e Integration of standardized GIS Web services 
(OGC WMS (Web Map Server), OGC WFS (Web 
Feature Server)) 
7, Conclusion 
The Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) concept describes 
requirements for computer technologies, policies, and people 
necessary to promote the sharing of geographic information 
throughout all levels of government, private industry, Non- 
Governmental Organizations (NGOs), and the academic 
community (ESRI. March 2003). The SDI interconnects GIS 
nodes across the Internet—and, in many cases, over secure 
networks—to share information with one another openly 
(ie. hased on the best available set of working, widely 
adopted. practices and. methods). These and other types of 
GIS portals are being built at national, state, and local levels 
{or geographic information access and sharing. It is expected 
that many of these portals will be central sites that users can 
readily access and search. In early years, the constraints of 
computational speed and cost caused GIS vendors to focus on 
practical solutions such as direct file conversion. Data 
sharing between organizations with different GIS vendor 
systems was limited to data converters, transfer standards, 
and later open file formats. Sharing spatial data with other 
core business applications was rarely achieved. Today, most 
GIS products directly read and sometimes dynamically 
transform data with minimal time delay. The point here is 
276 
that the GIS community has been pursuing open 
interoperability for many years, and the solutions to 
achieving this goal have changed with the development of 
new technologies. In the early days of GIS, the focus, with 
rare exceptions, was on individual, isolated projects. Today 
the focus is on the integration of spatial data and analysis in 
the mission-critical business processes and work flows of the 
enterprise and on increasing the return on investment (ROI) 
in GIS technology and databases by improving 
interoperability, decision making, and service delivery. A 
GIS must produce useful information products that can be 
shared among multiple users, while at the same time provide 
a consistent infrastructure to ensure data integrity. It is 
important not to get caught up in the technology and forget 
this basic principle. Interoperability enables the integration of 
data between organizations and across applications and 
industries, resulting in the generation and sharing of more 
useful information. 
8. References 
ESRI. Summer 2003 Standarts and Interoperability 
ESRI. 2004 International User Conference 
ESRI. March 2003 Implementing a metadata catalog portal in 
a GIS network 
Gerco Hoogeweg.2004 ESRI GIS Portal Toolkit 
presentation 
9, Author Contact Adress 
Dr. Emin BANK 
Surveying Engineer, Ms.Sc. 
ISLEM Geographic Information Systems& Engineering 
Co.Ltd. 
13. Cad No: 14, Beysukent 
06530 ANKARA, TURKEY 
Tel: +90 312 235 64 90 
Fax: +90 312 2355682 
Mail: ebank(@islem.com.tr 
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