Geographic Information Web Services Research

There are two big problems in current GIS: 1) System and data is too centralized, which cannot adapt the fact that GIS data is distributed. 2) The integration among various GIS and GIS to other applications is a hard work and cost too much.Web Service can help to resolve these problems. Web Service defines the rule to exchange message between Web applications. This means applications written in various languages and running on various platforms can perform Remote Process Call via Web. The combination of GIS and Web Service enables GIS data and GIS functions to distribute in various locations and connected via Internet or Intranet to each other. Now, it's unnecessary to hold data and software components to get benefit from GIS.This paper reviews the development of GIS and Web, then analyses the background of GIS Web Service. After introducing some basic conceptions, the paper explains the principle of GIS Web Service, and expounds that the combination of GIS and Web Service is a revolution. The paper also researches several foreign successful GIS Web Services, and brings forward a solution of GIS Web Service based Java, and gives the realization of some key technology. Finally, the paper introduces this prototype of GIS Web Service based on Java.