Integrating GI with non-GI services—showcasing interoperability in a heterogeneous service-oriented architecture

Abstract

The concept of a service-oriented architecture provides a technical foundation for delivering, using, and integrating software. It can serve as an approach to integrate GIS with other, non-GIS applications. This paper presents and discusses a service-oriented architecture that embraces a GIS and an enterprise resource planning system. The two information systems make mutually required functionalities available as services. This defines the showcase for making GI and non-GI services syntactically and semantically interoperable. The services-based integration leverages open-standard interfacing and, thus, removes syntactic heterogeneity. The integration is discussed in terms of an emergency management scenario. This scenario also helps to outline challenging semantic interoperability issues. When services provided by GIS and non-GIS applications interact, the problem arises how their different conceptualizations should be mapped. This paper analyzes essential ontological distinctions for mapping conceptual schemes in GI locator services and non-GI services. It proposes a hybrid decentralized approach of concept mapping, based on a common top-level ontology.

A Panorama of the Semantic EAI Initiatives and the Adoption of Ontologies by these Initiatives

“…Publication year Top-layer ontology [9] 2006 PSL (Process Specification Language) Ontology [10] 2007 DOLCE -SUMO alignment [11] 2007 DOLCE -SUMO alignment [12] 2010 DOLCE [13] 2011 DOLCE…”

Foundational Ontologies for Semantic Integration in EAI: A Systematic Literature Review

“…In the intersection of the two result sets, there was 1 study. So, in the end, the following 7 primary studies remained: [ [16]. Next, we present a brief description of each one.…”

“…In [16], Treiblmayr et al present an initiative for integrating a Geographic Information System (GIS) with a non-GIS application. These applications are integrated in terms of a service-oriented architecture, and the focus is on semantic interoperability.…”

“…This is the case of [16]. Treiblmayr et al adopt an approach for concept mapping where concepts of each application are described based on both: (i) primitive concepts from a common shared vocabulary given by DOLCE (direct approach); and (ii) what they call a "semantic reference system" (indirect approach).…”

“…Finally, Treiblmayr et al [16] present the use of ontologies only at development time. Application concepts are grounded in concepts from DOLCE and from the semantic reference system at development time.…”