CIP A 2003 XIX th International Symposium, 30 September - 04 October, 2003, Antalya, Turkey
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visible, enhancing all the attractions offered, promoting cultural
tourism.
We’re looking for a means to deliver data to people, in an
independent way from where they are: the best answer we have
today is Internet. It is possible to reach any part of the whole
world and it is not difficult to understand the benefits of this
solution and the incredible number of potentially reachable
people. Besides this solution is economical and simple for
users: whatever hardware or software configuration they are
using to connect to the WWW, and with elementary computer
knowledge, they can access the data shared by the Web/GIS. It
is important to add that sharing data on the WWW doesn’t
mean that anybody can obtain reserved information. The users
must see and have the chance of downloading only what we
want. Besides data aren’t shown in their raw format, but users
can usually see only some their elaborations.
Security is one of the main problems of this solution. No one
must access or download files they aren’t authorized: so it is
important to plan the web site in a way that some areas can be
used by everyone, whereas others have restricted access; it is
also important to plan security devices to prevent unwelcome
access and action.
2. MAPSERVER AND OPEN SOURCE 1 APPROACH
The next question is: “How is it possible to achieve all these
aims?”. The first problem we were faced with in this kind of
project concerned the choice of the proper software to manage
and deliver all the information to people, individuals
researchers or even to tourists. There are three factors we must
take into account when choosing the right software: the first is
the possibility of using some prebuilt useful functions, which
have been implemented in a software: and this is the first
difficulty when selecting software from many applications
available on the market.
The second one is the possibility of personalizing the software,
to solve problems connected to the project. Therefore we need
what is usually called an API (Application Programming
Interface) in order to interface with the software.
The last one is the economical aspect of the project. It is
necessary to reduce the construction costs also because they can
be an important factor, in particular in cultural conservation
where the are no sponsors.
Besides choosing a commercial product makes you dependant
on the solution chosen: you have to accept terms and conditions
of the software house, which don’t always meet your needs.
Just to quote an example, the fact that ESRI decided to stop
supporting Avenue language, forced thousands of users who
had spent time to learn it to rewrite their applications in Visual
Basic for the new version of the GIS software.
This is why the Open Source solution was chosen as the right
approach to meet all these goals. All the software employed is
1 “Reporters often ask me the days if I think the open-source
community will be corrupted by the influence of big money. I
tell them what / believe, which is this: commercial demand for
programmers has been so intense for so long that anyone who
can be seriously ditracted by money is already gone. Our
community has been self-selected for caring about other things-
accomplishment, pride, artistic passion, and each other”. Eric
S. Raymond, the major contributor to GNU Emacs editor
rigoursly Open Source and released under the well known GPL
License 2 , as the “Marchesato di Saluzzo” project.
The first software we used is Mapserver, the GIS environment
to distribute the data trough the web. MapServer is an
OpenSource development environment for building spatially
enabled Internet applications. The software builds upon other
popular OpenSource or freeware systems like Shapelib,
FreeType, Proj.4, libTIFF, Perl and others. MapServer will run
where most commercial systems won't or can't, on
Linux/Apache platforms. MapServer is known to compile on
most UNIXes and will run under Windows NT/98/95.
The MapServer system supports MapScript which allows
popular scripting languages such as Perl, Python, Tk/Tcl, Guile
and even Java to access the MapServer C API. MapScript
provides a rich environment for developing applications that
integrate disparate data. If the data has a spatial component and
you can get to it via your favorite scripting enviroment then you
can map it. For example, using Perl's DBI module it is possible
to integrate data from just about any database vendor (eg.
Oracle, Sybase, MySQL) with traditional GIS data in a single
map graphics or web page. In addition, there is now a
PHP/MapScript module included in the current release- thanks
DMSolutions.
There is also the MapServer CGI application which provides a
significant number of "out-of-the-box" features. Here is a
sampling:
• vector formats supported: ESRI shapefiles,
simple embedded features, ESRI ArcSDE
(alpha release)
• raster formats supported (8-bit only):
TIFF/GeoTIFF, GIF, PNG, ERDAS, JPEG
and EPPL7
• quadtree spatial indexing for shapefiles
• fully customizable, template driven output
• feature selection by item/value, point, area
or another feature
• TrueType font support
• support for tiled raster and vector data
(display only)
• automatic legend and scalebar building
• scale dependent feature drawing and
application execution
• thematic map building using logical or
regular expression based classes
• feature labeling including label collision
mediation
• on-the-fly configuration via URLs
• on-the-fly projection
3. “THE MARCHESATO DI SALUZZO” PROJECT
The case described in this article is about the research project
“Landscape heritage and resource management: an integrated
information system of Marchesato di Saluzzo”, funded by
2 The General Public License is designed to make sure it is
possible to give away or sell copies of free software, to receive
source codes or get it if you want, to change the software or use
pieces of it in new free programs; besides it makes you know
you can do these things.
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