Grid-Enabled High Performance GIS Web Portals

This paper introduces a design framework for developing GIService Web portals which are supported by grid computing and service-oriented architecture. A GIS Web portal can be enhanced by grid computing technologies to improve its performance, usability and security. The loosely-coupled Internet GIServices can be combined and integrated by implementing service-oriented architecture (SOA). The grid computing and SOA paradigms introduce new challenges for designing efficient and flexible GIS Web portals. Given these challenges, a new framework is proposed. Following the framework, a technical implementation plan is outlined toward building grid-enabled high performance GIService Web portals using the state-of the-art computing technologies, including grid computing, Web services, and Web portals. A prototype demonstrates the feasibility of the technical plan.