iiPortal - An XML Technology
Integrated Interactive Portal (iiPortal) is a web-enabled, spatial, data-rendering and viewing product. Based on the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) open Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) imaging standard, iiPortal provides a robust, cost-effective approach to making spatial data analysis tools available to any user community.
iiPortal is an effective tool for analyzing spatially related special data. It allows users to run queries on a wide range of information including accident data, construction zones, weather zones, census data, topographic information, and many others. The user defines their own parameters of data to be included in a query - no limitations exist to the types or amount of available data that can be contained in this query.
iiPortal illustrates transportation data, providing a new and meaningful method to display pertinent data by integrating geospatial and tabular data. For example, a user can plot roadways with an overlay of accident data, providing a mapping view of high risk traffic zones based on historical data.
Highlights of iiPortal include:
- Provide access to GIS information to any user group without the deployment of single-purpose GIS technology environments. iiPortal is maintained as part of your systems infrastructure.
- iiPortal can be linked to multi-media data types such as photographs, video clips, and audio files.
- iiPortal allows organizations to leverage existing investments in relational database software applications. Database application information can be made available to iiPortal and presented with SVG via simple relationships between the data and coordinates information.
- iiPortal allows organizations to leverage existing investment in GIS software. GIS layer data from a variety of sources can be made available to iiPortal and layer data created for SVG can be shared with other GIS software.
- A user is able to maintain geospatial attributes in relationships. For example, once a map is downloaded, a user can easily measure the distance between two points. A live calculation occurs because the geospatial relationship is being maintained.
Scalable Vector Graphics
iiPortal uses scalable vector graphic (SVG) technology to query and plot information graphically on a map using an Internet browser interface. SVG uses an imaging application and language written in XML and is supported by key electronic publishing vendors. The SVG interface offers a solution to the problem of sharing many sophisticated, web-based images. SVG allows for three types of graphic objects: vector graphic shapes, images, and text.
Advantages of using SVG:
Data-driven graphics. Because it is written in XML, SVG content can be linked to back-end business processes such as e-commerce systems, corporate databases, and other rich sources of real-time information. iiPortal can be linked to a database with coordinates of locations.
- Easily updated. As data changes, so does the map. Unlike other proprietary formats, SVG separates design from content, making updates to the map painless.
- SVG drawings can be dynamic and interactive. A rich set of event handlers such as ‘on mouse over’ and ‘on click’ can be assigned to any SVG object. Because of its compatibility and leveraging of other Web standards, features like scripting can be done on SVG elements and other XML elements from different namespaces simultaneously within the same page.
- Reduces server loads. Using SVG technology, data is downloaded only once and is manipulated locally on the personal computer. This saves reload time and is efficient for lower speed communication devices. For example, zooming in is extremely fast and can instantly provide additional details such as street names, building addresses, and topographic information. Some older technologies have to create graphics and maps every time changes in query criteria are made, use of SVG technology eliminates that.
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