Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
3 InfraWorld Examples
3.1 Platform Independency and Cross Platform Interaction
When one designs a platform, where collaboration and correlation of informa-
tion is connected to several different domains, in this case engineering domains,
one certainly must design its solution as open as possible enabling interdiscipli-
nary working environments. This was one of the main reasons why we chose the
Java Virtual Machine (JVM) as executable layer over for instance a .Net solution,
which would have constrained us to the Microsoft platform. JVM has working
solutions for many different platforms and appurtenant operating systems among
them Microsoft's most common Windows operating systems, Apples OSX and
several GNU/Linux distributions. All three platforms were used and tested under
different conditions in our test environment, see Fig.
2
.
Even though the whole idea is based on JVM, and that choice by itself should secure
a platform independency it is not a trivial setup. The consortium of the InfraWorld pro-
ject consisted of not only different companies with different applications but also with
different work and development environments, which made it natural rather than inten-
tional to test the GMO concept cross platform. Iver from Spain was developing on a
2D GIS platform using the open source environment gvSÌG programming in Java. Iver
used different platforms but was in this project running on a GNU/Linux platform.
Vianova from Finland was using Novapoint Virtual Map, their own development and
quite advanced viewer for 3D infrastructure models developed in C
++
, which also was
their preferred programming environment. Vianova only deploy their developments for
Microsoft Windows. Since GMO's are build using Java a special technique encapsulat-
ing GMO's within the C
++
environment was used by the Finns. Finally Norwegian
Norkart involved themselves using a client for visualising virtual worlds handling ter-
rain and aerial images together in a need way. Norkart was developing in Java also
using Java Virtual Machine. This platform also was used for the main development run-
ning on an Apple/OSX based machine. These three very different environments were
able to run JVM proofing the versatility of the concept of using JVM. Even though the
environments were very different not only from a machine/OS point of view but also
from an application point of view. GMO's created and executed in each of these com-
binations gave expected results, and even though for instance gvSIG was a 2D environ-
ment, the results were usable. The scenarios presented in the following paragraphs were
all using this setup and carried out during a life presentation with about 100 attendees.
A video footage of the event can be watched following this reference (Hoel
2012
).
3.2 Features Handled in Space and Time
A GMO is compared to for instance a traditional GIS not dependent on fixed coordi-
nates in the data model. This means that features are allowed to move around due to
