A service-oriented architecture for GIS applications

Many Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are currently built according to the N-Tier architectural style. Despite the advantages of this style in terms of simplicity for the GIS business domain, it lacks many capabilities related to several key characteristics that might affect reusability and extensibility of GIS systems. Service-oriented architecture (SOA), on the other hand, can better serve the continual changing nature of GIS business requirements by facilitating faster and more reliable implementation of business requirements. This paper analyzes the current state of one of the commonly used GIS applications, namely GRASS, to define a potential road map for re-factoring its architecture to match our proposed SOA style in this paper.