Semantic Interoperability

With geographic information systems (GIS) moving away from monolithic software to distributed network services, the question of how to ensure that these services operate with each other gains in importance. Typically, these services encapsulate a particular functionality exposed through a Web-based interface for communication as proposed by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). The service-oriented architecture (SOA) describes the interaction among the service provider, the service broker, and the user. The provider registers the service at a registry maintained by the service broker. The broker publishes the service interface and, hence, allows the service to be retrieved and finally executed by the user. The interface describes how to access the service and which data, if any, are exchanged. Besides human users, other services can also request ...