Research on the middleware of grid GIS: distributed cooperative computing GIS software and its key technologies

This paper introduces the concept of grid computing and its characteristics. Basing on analyzing the characteristics of grid computing, we apply grid computing to GIS field to construct grid GIS, which is the application of grid computing on geographic information system with grid computing as the basic running environment. According to the architecture of grid and integrating the characteristics of GIS, we design the architecture of grid GIS, which has three layers. They are grid GIS resource layer, grid GIS middleware layer and grid GIS application layer. Among them, the grid GIS middleware layer is the most important. Then this paper expatiates on our research on grid GIS middleware, which is about the design and development of distributed cooperative computing GIS software. The key technologies of the distributed cooperative computing GIS software are discussed, which include technology of global spatial resource management, spatial data computing task allocation and management, system consistency mechanism and system security mechanism. The implementation process is also presented. At last, this paper presents the further researches of the distributed cooperative computing GIS software.