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XML Web Services: Support for the Geospatial Information One-Stop

Brand Niemann, US EPAHakan Andersson, Qsent, Inc.

Chris Tucker, Ionic Enterprise, Inc.September 6, 2002

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New Product-Oriented Activity• CIOC Guidance:

– Evolve Architecture & Infrastructure Committee (AIC) to meet needs of Agencies as they implement e-Gov and Enterprise Architecture mandates.

– Integrate OMB and CIOC architecture efforts.– Increase emphasis on producing usable products for Federal agencies.

• Architecture & Infrastructure Committee (AIC) restructuring:– Management:

• Co-Chairs: Debra Stouffer (EPA CTO) and John Gilligan (Air Force CIO).• Advisor: Norman Lorentz (OMB CTO).

– Focus Areas:• Enterprise Architecture Policy, Guidance, and Structures.• Emerging Technologies.• Architecture Components.

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New Product-Oriented Activity

• Emerging Technologies:– Area Leads:

• XML – Owen Ambur (FWS) & Marion Royal (GSA)• XML Web Services – Brand Niemann (EPA)• Directory Services – Martin Smith (USITC)• Universal Access – Susan Turnbull (GSA)• PKI – Judy Spencer (GSA)

– Tasks:• Evaluate technology and define strategy.• Foster pilot efforts and share best practices.• Transition to other organization for operational support.

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New Product-Oriented Activity• Emerging Technologies (continued):

– XML standards-based process (e.g. W3C, OASIS, OGC, etc.):• Define community vocabulary and produce XML documents (e.g.

Schema, etc.).• Produce 2-3 successful pilot implementations.• Provide final recommendations to OMB.

– Some examples of current pilots:• E-Initiatives:

– Geospatial Information One-Stop (G2G).– Recreation.Gov (G2C).– Small Business Compliance One-Stop (G2B).– E-Records Management (IEE).

• Other federal:– XML Registry and Repository (XML.Gov).– Directory Listings as XML Web Services (e.g. “Blue Pages”).– Federal Enterprise Architecture Working Group (add an XML Web Services

Applications Layer).

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A Little History• Lead an Interagency Team that received special award for

innovation with XML Web Services and VoiceXML from Mark Forman and the Quad Council in March as part of the CIO Council’s Showcase of Excellence at FOSE 2002.

• Team was challenged to apply this emerging technology to the e-Gov initiatives, especially the Geospatial Information One-Stop. Met with John Moeller on April 4th.

• Scheduled to present “Blue Pages Pilot” to the FGDC Coordination Committee on June 4th, but re-scheduled now to September 5th. Presentation to the Geospatial Applications and Interoperability Work Group* and FirstGov on August 20th.

• Selected to lead new XML Web Services initiative within the restructured CIO Council’s Architecture & Infrastructure Committee (AIC) to provide direct “product oriented” support in implementing XML Web Services in the e-Gov and Enterprise Architecture initiatives.

*See http://gai.fgdc.gov/ and http://130.11.44.140

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What are XML Web Services?

• XML is a standard for preserving and communicating information – encoding, tagging, and internationalizing – that will be everywhere.

• Web Services provide communication between applications running on different Web servers that will bring the Internet to its new level.

• XML Web Services are applications running on different devices that communicate XML data using XML messages.

• XML Web Services for geospatial data use the OpenGIS Consortium’s GML (Geography Markup Language) and OWS (Open Web Services) standards and specifications.

• Web Services can and should be interoperable across multiple vendor tools and platforms in the enterprise (see http://www.ws-i.org/Community.aspx).

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Why are XML Web Services Important?• The eXtensible Markup Language became a World Wide Web

Consortium (W3C) standard in 1998 as the universal format for structured documents and data on the Web (http://www.w3.org/XML/).

• XML “future proofs” content against periodic technology changes.

• The CIO Council created the XML Working Group in 2000 to facilitate the efficient and effective use of XML through cooperative efforts among government agencies, including partnerships with commercial and industrial organizations (http://xml.gov/).

• GAO report to Congress urges government to adopt XML (http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d02327.pdf).

• XML Web Services is what OMB’s Mark Forman is encouraging in the E-Gov Initiatives and especially for the “collect once, use many” knowledge management projects like the Geospatial Information One-Stop.

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Business Case for XML (GML)• OMB’s Mark Forman (E-Gov 2002, June 26, 2002):

– Mark was asked about the reported redundancy in state-federal geospatial data activities and he responded that the states especially have complained about the costs involved, namely $10B total ($6 Federal and $4 State) and that about half of that ($5B) is wasted due to duplication of effort!

• EPA’s CIO Kim Nelson (GIS Day, November 8, 2001, and ORD Science Meeting, May 1-2, 2002:– Everyone needs to think about how to geographically reference all of

the data that we use and collect, so that we can share each others' resources. We have 100's of geo-spatial data products and resources. We need to develop data collection standards which will enable us to link and cross-reference these and other newly acquired resources.

• Publish, Find, and Bind:– Publish a description of the Web Services (WSDL) in a Directory

(UDDI) so others can Find it and Bind their interface or Web Service to it to link, chain, or integrate them together.

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What are Some Geospatial XML Web Services?

• Federal Spatial Statistics• EPA Geospatial Data Index• Interagency LandView Census-EPA

Population Estimation• EPA-State Content Network and EPA-CDC

Environmental Health Tracking Network• Universal Access to Geo-referenced Web

Content• “Blue Pages” Pilot

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What are Some Geospatial XML Web Services?EPA-State Content Network and EPA-CDC Environmental Health Tracking Network

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What are Some Geospatial XML Web Services?Universal Access to Geo-referenced Web Content

http://www.voicexml.org/, http://www.w3.org/Voice/

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Some New Initiatives

• See a future with commercial and non-commercial XML Web Services linked, chained, and/or integrated together with the advantage to the government of not having to replicate databases and infrastructure to build and maintain certain databases and services (author components once and use them many places):– Qsent:

• Verify EPA Facility Location Data and Perform Emergency Notification and Data Collection with VoiceXML.

– Ionic Enterprise:• LandView 6 – OGC Conformant Web Client Application and Distributed

GeoData Services (FY 2003).• GML and SVG Standards for the EPA State of the Environment

Report/Environment Indicator Initiative and EPA Situation Room Dashboards (collaboration-integration with DOI/USGS under discussion).

• Spatially Enabling the EPA with the OGC XML Standards and the OGC Spatial Web Registry Service (WRS).

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Some New InitiativesQsent’s Features

• Over 145 million residential, business and government listings (99+%). Every record verified through phone installation and account activation with credit history.– 250,000 to 500,000 updates daily

– Four searches methods• U.S. Residential – search for an individual

• U.S. Business and Government – search for business or government agencies

• Reverse Lookup – search by telephone number

• U.S. All – search all directories at once

– Geographic searches• City Surround – expand search incrementally from city center (lowest

ZIP)

• Neighborhood Search – search by neighborhoods using ZIP+4

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Some New InitiativesQsent’s iQ411 Applications:

Interactive, Integrated, and Batch

• iQ411 Interactive is a web-based directory information service that provides real-time, daily updated, definitively accurate data for residential, business and government listings for the U.S. and Puerto Rico.

• iQ411 Integrated provides real-time system integration using the industry-standard XML API to send and receive XML messages and data.

• iQ411 Batch provides off-line processing via automated FTP services for accurate appending and validation of phone numbers and address information.

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Some New InitiativesQsent’s Verification: Existing EPA Location Data

• Qsent matched 15 of the 25 records (60%) using our standard business search

• A more thorough analysis of the data would yield better matches.

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Some New InitiativesQsent Information Gathering, Alerts, & Emergency Notification

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Some New InitiativesQsent Emergency Notification

Simulated Contamination From Umatilla Army Depot

Affected Area

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Some New InitiativesQsent Emergency Notification

Geo Notification Set

Simulated Contamination From Umatilla Army Depot

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Some New InitiativesQsent Emergency Notification

Simulated Contamination From Umatilla Army Depot

Initial Calls Complete

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Some New InitiativesQsent Emergency Notification

Simulated Contamination From Umatilla Army Depot

All Calls Complete

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Some New InitiativesSVG (XML for Interactive Graphics)

• Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is an XML vector graphics standard (W3C) that enables them to be processed efficiently, robustly, and in an automated fashion and enables scaling, panning, highlighting, etc.

• Graphical applications that are currently realized using bitmap graphics will start using SVG. The scope of SVG use will expand and it will displace the use of bitmap graphics in many areas, prime examples of which include mapping and GIS applications.– Source: Interactive Graphical Visualization with SVG, Chapter 12 in

XML and Web Services Unleashed, Sams, February 2002, 500-543.

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Some New InitiativesSVG (XML for Interactive Graphics)

Printable Map (user controls whether map layers are hidden or visible)http://www.adobe.com/svg/demos/printmap/main.html

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Some New InitiativesGML and SVG

• GML makes it possible to renders legacy and third-party data and services interoperable – minimizing the coupling between components.

• GML enables multi-source, multi-sensor fusion.

• GML can be converted to SVG on-the-fly.

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Some New InitiativesGML and SVG

IONIC PORTRAYAL PRO ENGINE

Query Constraints

Device Characterisitics

Image Constraints

Rules & Style

Display Element

Features

Image

Data Source

WFS / Filter

Render

Convert

Features OpenGIS Features

Raster/ Vector Descriptions

Image data

Display

Image Format Image

Format

OpenGIS Features

Display Element

Generator

Rules and logic Feature Modifier

Framework

Business plug-in

IONIC BASIC PORTRAYAL ENGINE

Advanced Rules

Advanced Formats

Copyright © 2002 – IONIC Software – All Rights Reserved

IONICTM Portrayal Engine V1.1 Web Edition & Java Edition

25Topo =Map Server

BaseMap = Feature Server

Imagery =Imagery =CoverageCoverage

ServerServer

Raster =Map Server

Network = Feature Server

RDBMS / GIS / ‘non-GIS’= Features Servers Objects GML/XML Rendering

Online Geo-Services

IONIC WorldviewIONIC Worldview

Some New InitiativesSpatially Enabling the EPA with the OGC XML Standards including OGC Web Registry Service

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OGCWeb Registry Service

1

USGSGNIS

Gazetteer

Other Federal

GIS or DB

CensusTIGER &

STF

DoTNational Trans. Atlas

EPASTORET

EPAAirData

EPAEnviroFa

ctsDB

EPAAirNow

End Users ( B2C or B2B )

State and NGOResources

2

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USGSGNIS

Gazetteer

Other Federal

GIS or DB

CensusTIGER &

STF

DoTNational Trans. Atlas

EPASTORET

EPAAirData

EPAEnviroFa

ctsDB

EPAAirNow

End Users ( B2C or B2B )

State and NGOResources

CascadingWFS/WMS

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OGCWRS

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Some Next Steps

• FGDC Coordination Committee, September 5th.• Federal Solutions Architect Working Group Retreat,

September 10th.• CICO AIC Meeting, September 12th.• Universal Access Workshop and Federal Architecture

Work Group Meeting, September 17th.• EPA GIS Workgroup Meeting, September 23-26th.• FedWeb 2002 Fall Conference, October 28-29th.

• OEI National Meeting, November 5-6th.• EPA GIS Day, November 19-20th.