Development and comparison of Open Source based web GIS frameworks on WAMP and Apache Tomcat web servers

Abstract

Geographic Information System (GIS) is a tool used for capture, storage, manipulation, query and presentation of spatial data that have applicability in diverse fields. Web GIS has put GIS on Web, that made it available to common public which was earlier used by few elite users. In the present paper, development of Web GIS frameworks has been explained that provide the requisite knowledge for creating Web based GIS applications. Open Source Software (OSS) have been used to develop two Web GIS frameworks. In first Web GIS framework, WAMP server, ALOV, Quantum GIS and MySQL have been used while in second Web GIS framework, Apache Tomcat server, GeoServer, Quantum GIS, PostgreSQL and PostGIS have been used. These two Web GIS frameworks have been critically compared to bring out the suitability of each for a particular application as well as their performance. This will assist users in selecting the most suitable one for a particular Web GIS application.