Innovative Software Development in GIS

Chapter 6

GEOLIS: a Logical Information System to Organize and Search Geo-Located Data

6.1. Introduction

GEOLIS is a geo-located data exploration tool. It concerns files of the GML format and presents itself as a Web interface combining a query zone, a dynamic map displaying the query results, and a dynamic index reflecting the result distribution. GEOLIS's main specificity is to guide the user step-by-step in building complex queries while guaranteeing that they will not lead to empty results. This navigation allows both targeted and exploratory searches. GEOLIS is mainly meant for final users, but also offers several expansion points so as to specialize it for different applications.

6.2. Background history

GEOLIS was developed by Olivier Bedel during his doctorate with the Logical Information Systems (LIS) team at the IRISA¹ between 2005 and 2008. Its development was then taken up by Pierre Allard. GEOLIS follows on from the development of LIS and coexists with other implementations (CAMELIS, LISFS, ABILIS) which share some components. The original idea behind LIS was suggested by Olivier Ridoux who found that hierarchical data organizations, in general, and hierarchical file systems, in particular, were unsatisfactory. He was not satisfied with databases either due to their lack of flexibility, lack of integration in a system and with other applications, or lack of navigation to help non-expert users. His first idea was to combine query expressiveness, by using logics, and ...