customer-facing gis: web, e- commerce, and mobile solutions chapter 5 slides from james pick,...

Customer-Facing GIS: Web, E-Commerce, and Mobile Solutions

Chapter 5 Slides from

James Pick, Geo-Business: GIS in the Digital Organization, John Wiley and Sons, 2008.

Copyright © 2008 John Wiley and Sons.

DO NOT CIRCULATE WITHOUT

PERMISSION OF JAMES PICK

Copyright (c) 2008 by John Wiley and Sons

Consumer-Facing GIS• Consumers today have growing dependency on

web and mobile technologies• Traditional client-server architectures can be

contrasted with modern web/mobile ones.• The advances in consumer facing GIS are

happening quickly, so contemporary case studies are useful.– Ones included are Edens & Avant, Delaware Dept. of

Transportation, DS Waters, Seaspan International, MotionBased, MasterCard, and Zillow.com

– The pace is fast and many companies are forming and others being converted to spatial map services


Client-Server Architecture

• Software resides on a server, a powerful desktop-size computer.

• The server accesses data located in a data-base.

• The server communicates information across the internet (or other type of network) to multiple clients.

• The client may have little software or data (thin client) or lots of software or data (thick client)

• The processing is shared in different ways between the server and client.


Example of Client-Server: ABC Company

• ABC Company has three servers, one for networking, one for applications software, and one for data.

• ABC’s fifty clients are varied. Engineers utilize thick clients. Customer-service people utilize thin clients.


Internet, Intranet, Extranet and their Impact on Client Server

• Internet is generic. It refers to broad internet exchange with the whole world i.e. to all publicly accessible servers.

• Intranet is the internet restricted to users internal to an organization. For intranet client-server, the server or servers are restricted to one organization. Example. When you access the University of Redlands website, you are going onto the UofR Intranet.

• The extranet is a broader intranet, where approved outside users have access.


Client Server Architectures: 3 variations

(Fig 5.1)Copyright (c) 2008 by John Wiley

and Sons

Spatial Web Services Architecture• This variant is a subset of client-server internet. • There is a specialized server for spatial web services,

plus other application servers.• The internet is open to the world, but the network

includes access to other spatial web services and non-spatial servers.

• The client is connected through the internet.• Advantages. This architecture allows quick exchanges

of information between multiple spatial and non-spatial services. Since common standards are in place, many spatial services can work together seamlessly. – Example Prudential Preferred Realty in Chicago is using spatial

web services. It has the plus of great availability of browsers by users, plus it can coordinate software development better between its own servers. In the future It could also coordinate better with servers at other organizations that use the same standards.


Spatial Web Services and Mobile Services Architectures

(Fig 5.1)


Mobile Services Architecture• The final variant is architecture for Mobile Services

(Location-Based Services).• There are content servers that provide information

across the internet application servers. • A gateway connects the hosts servers through a wireless

network to mobile clients.• Advantages. The pluses already examined of spatial

web services are present. But an added plus is access for mobile users to spatial web services. Here, some of the users are themselves moving around dynamically in space.

• Disadvantages. There are enlarged security problems, since radio transmissions are more vulnerable to intrusion or theft. Second, mobile devices mostly have map displays that are too small.


Web Services Model

Client-Server Model

User Management

User profiles X X

Secuirty and access control X XClients

PCs (standard and browser-base apps) X XMobile devices (cell phones, PDAs etc.) X X

Middleware

API-based middleware interactions X X

Interactions with multiple servers X XServers

Web servers X XProprietary servers NA X

X = Fully supported X = Partially supported, with constraintsNote: API is Application-programming interface. (Source: Ismail et al., 2005)

Comparison of Web Services and Client-Server Models


Three Key Aspects of Spatial Web Services• User profiles. They are stored on a catalog server. A standard was to store

a user profile is UUP (Universal User Profile). Through the UUP permissions can be obtained and the user profile checked to see if the web service can proceed.

– Example. Sometimes when you sign up for a website, it will ask you if you would allow your information to be shared. If you say yes, your UUP will be changed on a Catalog Server.

• Ways to access web services. In the text several methods are given to locate the desired web service. The user may not be aware how this is being done. Take a look on page 9.

• Orchestration of web services. This refers to the series of access steps that comprise complex web services. Mostly the web services are orchestrated by OGC standards. Orchestration is the chaining of services. The user is often not involved in directing the orchestration. There can be a complex outcome of accessing of diverse web services, without the user being away.

– Example. ESRI’s Business Analyst Online. It coordinates spatial web services for demographics, geo-segmentation, market analysis, S&P information, and forecast. The user requests a spatial output out of thousands available. ESRI has set up coordinated spatial web services. They are located internally at ESRI. However, ESRI will soon make BAO available as a product that a company can license for its own internal use, so it can not only use what’s on ESRI’s servers, but complement it with its own web services.


User’s Perspec-tive on Web Services

(Fig 5.2, Modified from Ismail et al., 2004)


Consumer Web Services - Examples

• Consumer web map services are exploding in number and variety of uses. They vary in quality, openness of access, cost, and types of users. They also vary in the architectures, standards, and web services types that have been looked at so far.

• The only lecture example discussed is Edens & Avant.• A number of examples were assigned as case studies

for this week: Truilia, DataPlace, DS Waters, Seaspan International, MotionBased Technologies, MasterCard, and Zillow. You will have a chance to discuss ones you didn’t do as homework in the group breakout.


Consumer Web Service Example: Edens & Avant (E&A)

• E&A, a medium-sized shopping center developer, serves nineteen Eastern states and over 170 shopping centers, with assets of over $3 billion.

• E&A built a spatial web service for its retail customers who seek shopping-center space that allows them to analyze and compare shopping centers in order to choose a location.

• Online, the customer can see the layout of the center, proximity to competitors, road maps, shortest routes, drive times, local geography, demographics, and the market size. – The application utilizes ESRI’s Business Analyst,

RouteMAP, the ArcIMS spatial web server (Beitz, 2001). • An E&A customer can look through hundreds of possible

locations and weigh characteristics of the shopping center, demographics, distances, appearance, and layout


Edens & Avant (cont.)

• E&A cites the benefits to retailers of saving time in siting decisions and being able to coordinate multiple sites.

• Another benefit is for E&A leasing representatives, who now have to think proactively about the same spatial choices that confront their customers.

• The E&A example shows how web services can combine a lot of data from the Business Analyst and other sources with powerful routing algorithms, and yet be very user-friendly and accessible to users.


Edens & Avant Spatial Web Services. Property in Port Jefferson Station, NY

(Fig 5.4, Source: Edens & Avant, 2007)


http://www.edensandavant.com/



Trulia Real Estate Search, Miami, FL

(Fig 5.6, Source: Trulia, 2007)Copyright (c) 2008 by John Wiley

and Sons

DS Waters: Cell Phone and Mobile Web Service which Track Deliveries.

(Fig 5.8, Source: ESRI, 2007)


Architecture of Seaspan’s Mobile Network


Seaspan Dispatch Center

(Source: nix-pix, 2007)Copyright (c) 2008 by John Wiley

and Sons

Seaspan Map Showing Ship Located in Vancouver Region and Assigned Tugs

(Fig 5.11, Source: Miller, 2005)


Zillow.com: Z-Estimate of Property

(Source: Zillow.com, 2007)Copyright (c) 2008 by John Wiley

and Sons

Mobile Services

• Mobile services (also referred to as Location-Based Services or LBS) are a wide variety of services that provide access to locational and associated attribute information for users of portable locational devices.

• Spatial mobile devices communicate with server networks by GPS, RFID, Wi-Fi, and WiMax (Astroth, 2005).

• The X,Y coordinate location can be transmitted to a mobile server through Wi-Fi or WiMax communications. – A device with an RFID tag can have its location read by a

nearby RFID reader and the reader updates information on a server with the reader’s X,Y location.


Mobile Services: the business benefits of mobility

• Mobile services benefit a range of businesses by providing a mobile employee with maps, web-based information, knowing where he/she is located, communicating instantaneously, and receiving field data inputs, resulting in enhanced responsiveness to customers in the field.

• While computer users are more fixed in location, the users of mobile services are in dynamic physical movement.

• Some business examples of spatial uses are employees involved in monitoring assets in the field, logistics, navigation, real estate, marketing, sales force, and electronic marketplaces.


An Emerging Trend in Mobile Services: Location Awareness

• This refers to automatic reporting to a customer of information related to his/her current location.

• For instance a customer in a downtown city neighborhood can request hotel information from his/her GPS-enabled mobile device and it will signal what hotels are within a quarter mile and also have rooms available.

Class Question. What do you perceive as the disadvantages of location awareness?

(Source: GeoVector)


Mobile Services - Major VendorsInfrastructure Software Providers:

Provide databases, application servers, positioning servers, and enterprise applications. (IBM, Lucent, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, Oracle, and Sun)

Network and Handset Positioning Vendors: Give positioning technology in the network structure or GPS positioning technology into handsets and other mobile devices. (Alcatel, Cambridge Positioning Systems, Ericsson, Lucent, Motorola, Nokia, Qualcomm, Siemens)

Specialty Tools for LBS Offer mapping, spatial analysis, routing, and geocoding software for deploying mobile services (ESRI, Autodesk, Ionic, Intelliwhere, MapInfo, Telcontar)

Mobile Services Provide branded custom mobile services. Mapping, driving, and yellow pages (MapQuest, Vicinity, Webraska, Yahoo)

Satellite imagery services (GlobeXplorer) Real-time traffic (SmartTraveler, TrafficMaster) Geocoding and gazateer (Whereonearth) Content Providers

General (Governments: federal, state, local) Geographic (TeleAtlas, GDT, Navteq) Demographic and business (Acxiom, Claritas, InfoUSA, Polk)

Wireless and web portals Wireless carrier portals (Verizon, AT&T, British Telecom, Vodaphone) Wireless ASP portals (InfoSpace) Telematics portals (OnStar from GM) (Table 5.1, Source: Lopez, 2004)


Grid Computing: A Future Framework

• Grid Computing represents a future framework that offers greater processing power and a worldwide reach of collaborative web services beyond what is present today. Grid Computing refers to “flexible, secure, coordinated resource sharing among dynamic collections of individuals, institutions, and resources - what is referred to as the virtual organization” (Foster et al., 2001).

• It depends on open standards and protocols, that enable access to unprecedented amounts of resources across the internet.

• Rather than file-sharing, in the Grid environment, there is a collaboration of multiple web services working together across virtual organizations worldwide (Foster, 2001).


Grid Computing Framework• In the Grid Computing Framework, the users

access resource brokers, which in turn can access resources directly or link to grid information services that provide specialized help in accessing the resources.

• The information services have specialized strengths in discovering appropriate resources.

• A user accesses a sequence of resources and information services into order to solve his/her problem.

Class Question. What do you consider there would be issues with Grid Computing of security, privacy, and intellectual property?

(Buyya and Venugopal, 2005) Copyright (c) 2008 by John Wiley and Sons

Global Grid Computing Environment


Summary• Consumer-based spatial web and mobile services are

growing rapidly and providing ease, convenience, reach, and user communities for GIS that are unprecedented.

• It is essential first to understand “traditional” client server architecture and how it compares to the new web and mobile architectures.

• Standards are an essential ingredient to achieve seamless worldwide use.

• Examples are given in the chapter of a variety of spatial web services.

• Mobile web services are growing in use and free up the user to be mobile while interacting with the services.

• Grid computing carries the present trends to a future that is more global, integrated, quick, and powerful in real time spatial uses.


customer-facing gis: web, e- commerce, and mobile solutions chapter 5 slides from james pick,...

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