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Internet Mapping Framework
General Technical Notes
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The IMF is platform independent, and will run under a variety of web
servers and servlet engines on Windows, UNIX or Linux servers.
It is a set of Java Server Page (JSP) scripts, Java servlet classes, and a
custom Java object model which runs on a central Internet server to provide a
consistent set of functions and interfaces suitable for all spatial data.
The IMF also includes image files used by the web site template, as well
as complete documentation.
The IMF is deployed as an Application Service Provider model application whereby it
is installed on only one centralized server, but its services are available to any
agency within an organization. Your developers don't even need access to the IMF
server to deploy a new Internet mapping application. This approach facilitates an
infrastructure for application management, support, and maintenance.
The IMF has built-in image forwarding capability to allow it to display images that
originate from secure servers without exposing the services to the public.
All aspects of the application can be customized by elements in XML configuration files.
These include map service information, alternate index maps, explanatory and title
document locations, tabs, buttons, window sizes and placements, layer names and folders,
data organization, links to metadata, tools to set the initial, full or maximum map
extent, and reporting functions for map layers. For further insight and information
about the configuration of IMF sites, please contact us
for a copy of the applicable IMF Developer's Guide.
The framework contains a set of common functions and tools that can be easily
included in the web sites without programming. These include coordinate conversion
routines, location searches, scaled map output to PDF documents, organization of
layers into folders, and specialized layer configuration to set the reporting and
user control characteristics of each layer.
Sophisticated selection and identify handlers are included to allow custom reporting
routines to be defined for each layer, or to set a layer to be displayed without
selection and identify capability. If the default selection routine is used, fields
can be set to not display, and field alias can be set to label fields nicely. An
identify or selection can be configured to call a remote URL with key values from
the layer's feature table, or by inserting key values into an Oracle table and then
calling a URL that creates a dynamic report by joining to the results in the Oracle
table. The URL can be a reference to scripts, multimedia documents, or any other
accessible link. Reports can be programmed using any scripting language such as
JSP, ASP, ColdFusion, or perl.
IMF has been designed to make it easy to add new tools or routines to the core set of
functions included with the distribution. It is trivial to create new tools that interact
with the map, collecting a user point, line, polygon, or rectangle and sending the
coordinate values to your new routine. IMF contains projection and geoprocessing support
(buffer, intersect, union, etc.) in its Java classes to support the most complex
processes that you can think of.
This page contains general technical notes applicable to both versions
of IMF. Please also refer to the following pages for more detailed information
about the version that interests you.
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