Designs and Lessons Learned in Object-Oriented Web-Based Mapping

摘要

This paper presents a summary of designs used in developing an object-oriented web-based mapping application. The Web Mapping Toolkit (WMT) is a Java applet which accesses mapping data from the Geospatial Information Database (GIDB). The GIDB is an object-oriented database developed by the Naval Research Laboratory which stores multiple data types from many sources. The motivation for development of the WMT is to allow users to access geographical data over the Internet through a web browser, without the necessity of specialized software or hardware. Main topics of discussion for the design of the WMT will include choice of programming languages and data transfer protocols, object-oriented design applied to mapping, use of object-oriented pointers for efficient retrieval, interface definition language (idl) design choices, and factors associated with map display. Lessons learned throughout the design process will also be presented.