11-07, 11:25– (Australia/Hobart), Anglesea Room
In this presentation, an older member of the community reflects on aspects of Enterprise Spatial deployment and the role of Free and Open Source Software within it. The author will present the idea of creating reusable templates that can guide solution creation and deployment.
Tenders for spatial solutions, eg from Councils, are often couched in terms of the provision of a single, integrated, enterprise solution.
Responding to such tenders using ESRI software only is easier because ESRI markets its software as providing a single packaged enterprise solution in which all of the spatial functionality that might be envisioned for an organisation are addressed; from back office to front office. Along with ESRI software there is training, software versioning, and support which are key to supporting a packaged solution. (I will not discuss how well ESRI provides a truly enterprise solution – that is outside the scope of this paper.)
Crafting a single integrated, version controlled, and supportable solution using FOSS4G components is challenging because FOSS4G projects, such as GeoServer, PostGIS, OpenLayers, and qGIS, are managed independently of each other. Additionally, a solution might have to be crafted from heterogeneous components as the situation dictates: PostGIS may not be deployable where an organisation insists that all database storage has to be managed by SQL Server. So when one adds commercial software into the mix, such as database vendors or ESRI components, or specific technology is required as part of the solution (eg a ReactJS only client tier), or the whole stack has to be proven to work within a single internationalised language environment, creating an integrated solution becomes a challenge.
Yes, all the components so described can be downloaded, integrated, version controlled, documented and supportable but this is not easy and, even worse, not easily replicated to other organisations by those whose focus is only on a single point solution.
So how can one provide an integrated, “enterprise” solution from any one set of components that is shareable and reusable? And how can one do so via a packaged solution that has resolved integration issues, and manages software versioning etc (provision of training and support is also outside the scope of this paper)?
The author does not pretend to have an answer to this but suggests that a way forward for enterprise solutions using FOSS4G software may be via a different sort of FOSS4G project which aims at guiding enterprise solutions architecture via a set of templates that can be used as a basis for creating and deploying an open, but integrated, solution.
This is what he calls the “Spatial Enterprise Architecture Template” or SEAT, project.
A template might be created that describes how to use SQL Server Spatial, GeoServer and qGIS, to implement a full spatial data editing and versioning solution using fully tested components (eg qGIS plugins for versioning that used SQL Server temporal data management). Another template might address how to use PostgreSQL partitioning within a PostGIS, qGIS, qGIS Server technology stack in which managing software versions is addressed.
These templates are not proprietary but are themselves free and open source (perhaps covered by Creative Commons licensing).
It is perhaps a bit bold as to call for interested parties to implement SEAT, but he would be interested to start a conversation with anyone that sees merit in the project and might join in evolving the idea.
To be added