Web-Based Integrative Presentation of Distributed Spatial Data

WebGIS typically consists of many clients and unique server. Such a framework is suitable for simple application. But for many real cases, the client possibly needs a map which contains a lot of theme layers referring to spatial data owned by different departments. Therefore how to technically integrate the spatial data, physically distributed over different data/map server, together into one client's view is worthy of attention. One solution for this purpose is to pull multi-source spatial data to a unique web map server. Another solution is to implement 'pulling spatial map from different web map service' at client. Both solutions have some advantages and shortcomings to meet the increasing complex requirements. This paper gives a brief introduction to Open Source Web Map client: OpenLayers and to Open Source Web Map Server: MapGuide OS, and then proposes a new solution. With the solution MapGuide OS is used to organize the distributed spatial data/services, meanwhile, OpenLayers is used as a container for accepting multi-source map image together from different types of web map service including MapGuide OS. One real WebGIS application based on proposed solution is introduced, which obviously possesses advantages of two traditional solutions and has much better extensibility.