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Track: Database Management and SDE
Bruce Mackenzie
BC Environment SSB
737 Courtney Street 3rd Floor
Victoria, BC V8V 1X1
CANADA
Telephone: 250-387-4192
Fax: 250-356-7297
E-mail: bmackenz@ssbpost.env.gov.bc.ca
Todd Glover
GOAT Query/Viewer for Spatial and Attribute Information
GOAT is a simple generic interface for access to spatial and attribute data by people with no training in GIS or RDBMS technologies. It has now been implemented in three development environments, including ArcInfo, ARCPLOT and ArcView Version 3.0. GOAT incorporates simplified menus, arbitrary combination of spatial layers, data definition language that defines 'views' of spatial and attribute data in the user's language, direct access to metadata programmable optimizations for different types of data. GOAT is an integral part of BC Environment's distributed spatial data warehouse infrastructure, building on common data sets and standards [Mackenzie, 1996 Esri User Conference Proceedings]. Business experts throughout the ministry are using it to access hundreds of layers of corporate spatial data with a maximum of four hours orientation. This paper gives a short history of GOAT's development, its scope (including limitations), an overview of its functions, and an explanation of the role of the human
interpreter in data visualization. GOAT's flexibility is largely because an expert modeler, separate from the end user, defines views into its data. These views hide data complexity, data sources, and links to attributes in RDBMS.
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