A grid-enabled Web map server

Today Geographic Information Systems (GIS) provide several tools for studying and analyzing varied human and natural phenomena, therefore GIS and geospatial data has grown so much in both public and private organizations. A challenge is the integration of these data to get innovative and exhaustive knowledge about topics of interest. In this paper we describe the design of a Web map service (WMS) OGC-compliant, through the use of grid computing technology and demonstrate how this approach can improve, w.r.t. security, performance, efficiency and scalability, the integration of geospatial multi-source data. End users, with a single sign-on, securely and transparently, gets maps whose data are distributed on heterogeneous data sources belonging to one or more Virtual Organizations via distributed queries in a grid computing environment.