A practical approach to developing a web-based geospatial workflow composition and execution system

Abstract

Motivated by lacking the capability of supporting geospatial workflow composition and execution in a Web environment from leading GIS (such as ESRI ArcGIS), we have developed a prototype system by integrating mature open source and commercial software packages in an innovative way. Our prototype system includes a client module for visual and interactive workflow editing based on Ptolemy II (a modeling and design system), a geospatial actor library representing 500+ ArcGIS geoprocessing tools for drag-and-drop-based workflow composition, a middleware as a workflow engine to schedule and execute ArcGIS Geoprocessing tools based on composed geospatial workflows, and, a Web-GIS to visualize original and derived data along a workflow processing pipeline. By reusing the mature software packages, we are able to complete the prototype development within weeks instead of months or years. A site selection problem that involves multiple geospatial operations are used to demonstrate the functionality and features of the prototype system.

A Processing Framework of Grid Workflow for Remote Sensing Quantitative Retrieval

“…It is non-trivial to develop a geospatial Grid workflow system. (Zhang, 2012). Grid workflow for remote sensing quantitative retrieval is a type of grid workflow system, and is built on the basis of resource and service management of grid system.…”

Improving the Reuse of Services in Geospatial Applications with XMDD Technology

“…In addition, there is a lack of a framework for facilitating service execution, thus users face a great challenge when it comes to servification, that is, the process of turning arbitrary software components into proper services. Attempts were made to improve the reuse of service in geospatial applications for end users (application experts), and some works addressed technical complexities of workflow systems by enabling Web-based workflow composition and editing [16,12], while others proposed a model-driven way of geospatial Web Service composition [17]. Lately, cloud technology has been used to support efficient resource allocation and execution for scientific workflows [18,19].…”