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Abstract
An XML-Driven Data Translation Engine for XML
Track: New Technology and Technology Integration
Author(s): Clinton Thomas
There are a number of XML-based spatial data formats currently available (GML1, GML2, SOTF, LandXML, SVG, for example), and many more being developed (GML3 and new version of GDF) throughout the GIS industry. In addition to the regular spatial data translation challenges, XML represents new flexibility in the way in which people can exchange data. This flexibility presents an interesting challenge, as users are able to structure their XML formats in vastly different manners. One approach to supporting these XML-based formats would be to develop different translation components for each format resulting in a large effort for each format. The problem with this approach is that as the number of XML based formats for spatial information is growing the amount of development required would be large. The approach described was to write a single configurable XML data translation engine that enables translation between XML based formats and other GIS formats. The XML translation engine is configured using XML and is able to exploit the capabilities of our general-purpose data translation components. This enables new XML-based support to be added by anyone thereby enabling new formats to be configured in time measured in hours rather than weeks. Once added the XML format can be used to move data from the XML based format to any supported GIS format or from any GIS format to the XML based format. Additional benefits of using this approach are the XML-based formats can then be viewed with the toolkit viewing capability and embedded into applications with a generic format API.
Clinton Thomas
Safe Software
Suite 2017-7445 132nd Street
Surrey , British Columbia V3W 1J8
Canada
Phone: (604) 501-9985
Fax: (604) 501-9965
E-mail: clinton.thomas@safe.com