[Geowanking] Open Source Web GIS System Architecture

[Gregory Yetman]

Hi All,

Thanks for all of the responses. Got busy with a deadline here at the 
office, haven't had a chance to respond. I half-expected someone to say 
'sure, that exists, just look here...'.

To respond to a few questions people posed:

I think that there's a split audience for this type of thing: technical 
people (call them traditional IT, not much spatial experience), and the 
traditional GIS data type who's venturing out into the broader IT/web 
services field. The third type is the manager that needs to know that 
this sort of thing is possible, and documented, but won't ever read more 
than the summary.

My immediate need that prompted this is a new project I'm contributing 
to that will be using MapServer initially, with more software and 
standards (likely PostGIS and WFS/WMS) to be added later. This is being 
done to replace a legacy system. I have a feel for what's out there to 
put together a system for this, but I wanted to see what the options 
were for software. More to the point, I could use an architecture 
document as a starting point to talk with the IT folks I'll be working with.

More generally, over the past year I've had a few people, mostly from 
non-profit organizations, ask me if this sort of thing can be 
implemented with 'free' or Open Source software. I don't mind giving my 
feedback to them, but it's hard to be comprehensive in my 
recommendations as I haven't implemented a number of the open source 
packages that would be necessary for an end-to-end system. It's much 
easier to give an overview and point them to a few documents to read.

I'm still wading through all of the info folks sent. I may get back to a 
few of you individually over the next few days.

Thanks again,

Greg