Grid-Enabled High Performance GIS Web Portals

This paper introduces a design framework for developing GIService web portals which are supported by Grid computing and Service-Oriented Architecture. A GIS web portal can be enhanced by Grid computing technologies to improve its performance, usability and security. The loosely-coupled Internet GIServices can be combined and integrated by implementing Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). The Grid computing and SOA paradigms introduce new challenges for designing efficient and flexible GIS web portals. Given these challenges, a new framework is proposed. Following the framework, a technical implementation plan is outlined toward building Grid-enabled high performance GIService web portals using the state-of the-art computing technologies, including Grid computing, Web services, and web portals. A prototype demonstrates the feasibility of the technical plan.