02155nas a2200133   4500008004100000022001400041245005600055210005400111260004200165520174100207100002001948700001701968856003601985       2009                        eng d  a1913-610200aA RESTful Implementation of Geospatial Web Services0 aRESTful Implementation of Geospatial Web Services  aOttawabTalent First Networkc02/20093 aIn "What is Web 2.0?" Tim O'Reilly identifies the characteristics that distinguish Web 2.0 from the first generation of Web applications. One key aspect is participation. Instead of users simply consuming information, Web 2.0 technology enables all of us to participate in building content. The power of Web 2.0, in Tim O?Reilly?s words, is that it provides a platform for "harnessing collective intelligence". Perhaps the best known example of this is Wikipedia, which is distinguished from other online encyclopedias by the fact that its content is provided by users rather than a small group of experts. This model has been so successful, even the Encyclopedia Britannica has adopted a Web 2.0 approach.

A critical challenge to participation is interoperability--integrating the islands of technology that characterize most information technology organizations. There have been earlier attempts to create a standard framework for distributed computing such as CORBA and DCOM, but the complexity of these environments has limited their adoption. A more recent and simpler approach is Representational State Transfer (REST). In this article we begin with an examination of the critical challenges facing organizations responsible for maintaining our utility, telecommunications and transportation infrastructure, outline how open standards are helping to address these challenges, and then discuss how geospatial data and services can be exposed over the web. We introduce REST, outline a RESTful implementation of geospatial web services that provides simple and open access to geospatial data over the web using standard web protocols, and describe a prototype web site developed using RESTful web services by the City of Nanaimo.1 aKurtagic, Haris1 aZeiss, Geoff  uhttp://timreview.ca/article/238