Where in the world?
- Article 21 of 26
- M-iD, July 2005
Handling geographic information can be a challenge. But the technology is fast becoming part of the mainstream.
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“Our belief is that location is important to our customer base,” says Xavier Lopez, director of spatial technologies at Oracle. “The ability to provide simple MapQuest-like maps, display nearest stores, handle simple lines, points and polygons: these were all important to people. Once we provided that functionality through Oracle Locator, use [of spatial data] exploded in both the specialist and general markets,” he claims.
The majority of GIS vendors have now signed an interoperability agreement, standardising on Oracle Locator as the default storage area for their software's data, bringing geographical data further under the umbrella of standard corporate technology.
But ESRI's Duff argues that while Locator is fine for some purposes, it does not provide all the capabilities required by many GIS users. “It's in our interest as an industry to make spatial as mainstream as possible, but a vendor like ESRI is here to solve the difficult high-end problems,” he says. And standardised database technologies is not a suitable repository for all GIS applications.
House-keeping
Nevertheless, despite this new ability to unite geographic information with corporate data, database administrators still need to understand something about geographic information's unique characteristics, says Steve Calder of PA Consulting, if they are to manage it effectively.
“If you hold spatial data in Oracle, that data needs to be cleansed. All polygons need to be cleansed, so they don't have slivers, spikes or kickbacks. Those things impinge on the efficiency of something like Oracle, so you have to understand how to make the data clean and then keep it clean,” says Calder.
Although certain GIS vendors, such as LaserScan, can provide software that will help in this task, typically there needs to be communication between the geographic information specialists and database administrators (DBAs) when handling geographic data. However, day-to-day running of the database can remain within the purview of the DBAs without the need for continual consultation with the organisation's GIS specialists.
Organisations also need to consider who should have access to the data and how. Usually, only the people who maintain a particular dataset and understand it should have write access - the ability to change it - and responsibility for it.
Deciding on the job roles and responsibilities for GIS data management is also easier for many organisations as a result of work by the Intragovernmental Group on Geographic Information (IGGI), which provides advice on best practice in dealing with geographic information.
GIS for all
Providing all employees with read-access to geographic information held in geographic information systems might be possible for small organisations. But in larger organisations, the licensing costs will make this prohibitively expensive.
Management will also be a challenge and the network and storage infrastructure would most likely require beefing up because of the data intensive nature of geographic information.
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