Track: Application Development
Extending Object-Oriented Concepts To Develop a Complex GIS Application Department: Information Systems
Kristi LombardMapObjects has allowed developers to create specialized GIS applications for a wide variety of uses. The modularity of the development environment allows programmers to include only the functionality required for their application. In addition, there are many add-on OCXs provided to the native programming environment (such as Visual Basic compatible Sheridan controls) and OCXs provided by third party vendors that cater to the GIS market. This paper describes an application that enables users to interact with geographic data in a manner that they are familiar with if they are current ArcView GIS users. This has been achieved by implementing the interface standards in a manner similar to ArcView GIS. A key factor was the implementation of a theme-based GIS. This has been done by implementing a theme class, where each layer added to the project is a theme object (an instance of the theme class). The table of contents is tied to the theme class in a manner that enables the users to interact directly with themes as they do with ArcView GIS. Some basic GIS functionality, such as buffers and theme editing, has been incorporated into the application. OCXs provided by third party vendors, such as Blue Marble Graphics, provide the ability to project the geographic data. In addition, the ability to create routes interactively, to create regions of interest, and a connection to Lotus Notes using VBLink are discussed.
Kristi Lombard
TASC
12100 Sunset Hills Rd.
Reston, VA 20190
USA
Telephone: 703-834-5000 x 2902
Fax: 703-318-7900
E-mail: klombard@tasc.com