Skip to main content

Advertisement

Log in

Advances in GML for Geospatial Applications

  • Published:
GeoInformatica Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This paper presents a study of Geography Markup Language (GML), the issues that arise from using GML for spatial applications, including storage, parsing, querying and visualization, as well as the use of GML for mobile devices and web services. GML is a modeling language developed by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) as a medium of uniform geographic data storage and exchange among diverse applications. Many new XML-based languages are being developed as open standards in various areas of application. It would be beneficial to integrate such languages with GML during the developmental stages, taking full advantage of a non-proprietary universal standard. As GML is a relatively new language still in development, data processing techniques need to be refined further in order for GML to become a more efficient medium for geospatial applications.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Fig. 1

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Denotes the entire family of releases 1.x, 2.x, and 3.x.

References

  1. Galdos Systems Inc., http://www.galdosinc.com, Last Retrieved on May 19, 2006.

  2. Geography Markup Language (GML).“Cover pages: online resource for markup language technologies,” http://xml.coverpages.org/geographyML.html. Last Retrieved on May 19, 2006.

  3. GeoTools.org., http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GEOTOOLS/Home, Last Retrieved on May 23, 2006.

  4. Microsoft Corporation—MSXML 4.0 SDK., http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/xmlsdk30/htm/xmmscxmloverview.asp, Last Retrieved on May 19, 2006.

  5. Open Geospatial Consortium—OpenGIS® Filter Encoding Implementation Specification. Ref Number OGC 02–023r4 v3. http://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=8340—Last Retrieved May 19, 2006.

  6. Oracle Corporation. “Location-based services for Oracle 9i,” http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/spatial/htdocs/data_sheet_9i/9iR2_spatial_ds.html—Last Retrieved on May 22, 2006.

  7. World Wide Web Consortium—XQuery 1.0: An XML query language, W3C working draft. http://www.w3.org/TR/xquery/. Last Retrieved on May 19, 2006.

  8. XQuery 1.0: An XML query language, W3C working draft. http://www.w3.org/TR/xquery/. Last Retrieved on May 19, 2006.

  9. R. Ackland and S. Cox. “Markup mapping,” http://www.positionmag.com.au/GU/content/2001/GU47/gu47_feature/gu47_feature_2.html—Last Retrived on May 26, 2006. GISUser—The Australasian Geographic Information Systems Applications Journal, Issue 47, September 2001.

  10. Apache XML project. “The apache software foundation—Xerces2 java parser,” http://xml.apache.org/xerces2-j/index.html—Last Retrieved on May 19, 2006.

  11. D. Beech, A. Malhotra, and M. Rys. “A formal data model and algebra for XML,” University of California, Berkeley, CS 298-13: Digital Library Seminar. http://elib.cs.berkeley.edu/seminar/2000/20000207.pdf—Last Retrieved on May 19, 2006.

  12. P. Bohannon, J. Freire, P. Roy, and J. Simeon. “From XML schema to relations: A cost-based approach to XML storage,” in Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Data Engineering, pp. 64–75, IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, 2002.

  13. A. Bonifati and S. Ceri. “Comparative analysis of five XML query languages,” ACM SIGMOD Record, Vol. 29:68–79, 2000.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. B. Brodaric, S. Cox, J. Laxton, E. Boisvert, T. Duffy, B. Johnson, S. Richard, and B. Simons. “Standardizing geologic data interchange: The CGI datamodel collaboration,” in GIS and Spatial Analysis—IAMG Annual Conference, 2005.

  15. D. Chamberlin, P. Fankhauser, M. Marchiori, and J. Robie. “XML query (XQuery) requirements,” XML Query Working Group. http://www.w3.org/TR/xquery-requirements—Last Retrieved on May 19, 2006.

  16. J.E. Corcoles and P. Gonzalez. “A specification of a spatial query language over GML,” Geographic information systems, in Proceedings of the Ninth ACM International Symposium on Advances in Geographic Information Systems, pp. 112–117, 2001.

  17. J.E. Corcoles and P. Gonzalez. “Analysis of different approaches for storing GML documents,” Geographic information systems, in Proceedings of the Tenth ACM International Symposium on Advances in Geographic Information Systems, pp. 11–16, 2002.

  18. S. Cox, P. Daisey, R. Lake, C. Portele, and A. Whiteside. “OpenGIS geography markup language (GML 3.0) implementation specification,” OpenGIS Specifications. http://www.opengis.org/specs/?page=specs—Last Retrieved on May 19, 2006.

  19. V. Dessard. “GML & web feature server. The baseline for online geoservices,” in Ionic Software Press Room. http://www.ionicsoft.com/pressroom/static/en/gml_wfs.pdf—Last Retrieved on May 22, 2006.

  20. ESRI GIS and Mapping Software, ArcExplorer. http://www.esri.com/software/arcexplorer/index.html—Last Retrieved on May 19, 2006.

  21. M. Fernandez, D. Florescu, J. Kang, A. Levy, and D. Suciu. “Catching the boat with strudel: experiences with a web-site management system,” in Proceedings of the 1998 ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data, pp. 414–425, 1998.

  22. Galdos Systems Inc. “Top 10 benefits of using GML,” Wireless developer network. http://www.wirelessdevnet.com/channels/lbs/features/top10gml/—Last Retrieved on May 19, 2006.

  23. E. Gbei, J. Nafaa, I. Cosma, and M. Bernard. “Modeling the Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG)data for the cartographic generalization and the multiple representation on the web,” in 2nd Annual Conference on Scalable Vector Graphics, 2003.

  24. H. Jiang, H. Lu, W. Wang, and J.X. Yu. “Path materialization revisited: an efficient storage model for XML data,” Australian Computer Science Communications, Vol. 24:85–94, 2002.

    Google Scholar 

  25. L. Khan and Y. Rao. “Web information management: a performance evaluation of storing XML data in relational database management systems,” in Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Web Information and Data Management, pp. 31–38, 2001.

  26. R. Lake. “Introduction to GML geography markup language,” http://www.w3.org/Mobile/posdep/GMLIntroduction.html—Last Retrieved on May 19, 2006.

  27. R. Lake “Location-based services & GML. Laying the geo-spatial web foundations,” Galdos Systems Inc, 2001.

  28. N.S.T. Lee. “Single line street network: the foundation of mobile GIS,” in Proceedings of the Vehicle Navigation and Information Systems Conference, pp. 34–37, 1993.

  29. Q. Li and B. Moon. “Indexing and querying XML data for regular path expressions,” in Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Very Large Data Bases (VLDB), pp. 361–370, 2001.

  30. A. Luniewski, P. Schwarz, K. Stamos, and J. Thomas. “Information organization using rufus,” in Proceedings of the 1993 ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data, pp. 560–561, 1993.

  31. J. McHugh, S. Abiteboul, R. Goldman, D. Quass, and J. Widon. “Lore: a database management system for semi-structured data,” ACM SIGMOD Record, Vol. 26:54–66, 1997.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. D. Murray and J.C. Chow. “An XML-driven data translation engine for GML 2,” in Proceedings of the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association, IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, 2002. http://www.safe.com/company/media_archive/GML_User_Perspectives.pdf—Last Retrieved on September 28, 2005.

  33. OpenGIS Consortium. “The OpenGIS abstract specification topic 12: OpenGIS service architecture version 4.3,” http://www.opengis.org/docs/02-112.pdf—Last Retrieved on May 19, 2006.

  34. OpenGIS Consortium. “Web feature service implementation specification,” http://www.opengis.org/docs/02-058.pdf—Last Retrieved on May 19, 2006.

  35. Z.-R. Peng and M.-H. Tsou. Internet GIS Distributed Geographic Information Services for the Internet and Wireless Networks. Wiley: New York, 2003.

  36. M. Prins. “Is GML only for internet GIS?,” Directions magazine. http://www.directionsmag.com/article.php?article_id=280—Last Retrieved on May 19, 2006.

  37. M. Reddy, L. Iverson, and Y.G. Leclerc. “Under the hood of geoVRML 1.0,” in Proceedings of the Fifth Symposium on Virtual Reality Modeling Language (Web3D-VRML), pp. 23–28, 2000.

  38. P. Rigaux, M. Scholl, and A. Voisard. Spatial Databases with Application to GIS. Morgan Kaufmann, San Mateo, CA, 2002.

  39. A. Schmidt, M. Kersten, M. Windhouwer, and F. Waas. “Efficient relational storage and retrieval of XML documents,” in Workshop on the World Wide Web and Databases (WebDB), pp 47–57, Springer, Berlin Heidelberg New York, 2000.

  40. S. Shekhar and S. Chawla. Spatial Databases: a Tour. Pearson Education, Toronto, Canada, 2003.

  41. S. Shekhar, R.R. Vatsavai, N. Sahay, T.E. Burk, and S. Lime. “WMS and GML based interoperable web mapping system,” in Proceedings of the Ninth ACM International Symposium on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (ACM GIS), pp. 106–111, 2001.

  42. H.S. Thompson, D. Beech, M. Maloney, and N. Mendelsohn. “XML schema part 1: Structures, W3C recommendation,” http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-1/—Last Retrieved on May 19, 2006, 2001.

  43. H.S. Thompson and R. Tobin. “Current status of XSV: coverage, known bugs, etc,” http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/~ht/xsv-status.html—Last Retrieved on May 19, 2006.

  44. R.R. Vatsavai. “GML-QL: a spatial query language specification for GML,” Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Minnesota. http://www.cobblestoneconcepts.com/ucgis2summer2002/vatsavai/vatsavai.htm—Last Retrieved on May 19, 2006.

  45. E.D. Vita, A. Piras, and S. Sanna. “Using compact GML to deploy interactive maps on mobile devices,” in The 12th International World Wide Web Conference http://www2003.org/cdrom/papers/poster/p051/p51-devita.html—Last Retrieved on May 22, 2006.

  46. A. Voisard. “Designing and integrating user interfaces of geographic database applications,” in Proceedings of the Workshop on Advanced Visual Interfaces, pp. 133–142, 1994.

  47. W3C DOM WG. “Document object model FAQ,” W3C Architecture Domain. http://www.w3.org/DOM/faq.html—Last Retrieved on May 19, 2006.

  48. M. Yoshikawa and T. Amagasa. “XRel: a path-based approach to storage and retrieval of XML documents using relational databases,” ACM Transactions on Internet Technology, Vol. 1:110–141, 2001.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  49. X. Zhang, K. Dimitrova, L. Wang, M.A. Sayed, B. Murphy, B. Pielech, M. Mulchandani, and E. Rundensteiner. “Rainbow: multi-XQuery optimization using materialized XML views,” in Proceedings of the ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data, pp. 671, 2003.

Download references

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their careful reading and in-depth suggestions.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Chang-Tien Lu.

Additional information

Please refer to Appendix A for a list of acronyms used in this paper.

Appendix

Appendix

Acronym

Description

3D

Three-Dimensional

ADT

Abstract Data Type

API

Application Programming Interface

CGML

Compact GML

DOM

Document Object Model

DTD

Document Type Descriptor

GML

Geography Markup Language

GPRS

General Packet Radio Service

GPS

Global Positioning System

HDML

Handheld Device Markup Language

HTML

Hypertext Markup Language

MexE

Mobile Execution Environment

OGC

Open Geospatial Consortium

OODBMS

Object-Oriented Database Management System

RDBMS

Relational Database Management Systems

SAX

Simple API for XML

SOAP

Simple Object Access Protocol

SQL

Structured Query Language

SRS

Spatial Reference System

SVG

Scalable Vector Graphics

UDDI

Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration

VML

Vector Markup Language

VRML

Virtual Reality Modeling Language

W3C

World Wide Web Consortium

WAP

Wireless Application Protocol

WCS

Web Coverage Services

WFS

Web Feature Service

WML

Website Meta Language

WMS

Web Map Service

WSDL

Web Service Definition Language

X3D

XML 3D

XML

Extensible Markup Language

XSLT

Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Lu, CT., Dos Santos, R.F., Sripada, L.N. et al. Advances in GML for Geospatial Applications. Geoinformatica 11, 131–157 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10707-006-0013-9

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10707-006-0013-9

Keywords

Navigation