gvSOS: a new client for the OGC® Sensor Obseration Service Interface standard

Abstract

A key problem with sensor networks is achieving interoperability between different networks potentially built using different software and hardware platforms. Services interfaced by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) specifications allow GIS clients to access geospatial data without knowing the details about how these data are gathered or stored. Currently, OGC is working on a set of interoperable interfaces and metadata encodings known as Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) that enables the integration of heterogeneous sensor systems and measurements into geospatial information infrastructures. In this article we present the implementation of gvSOS, a new module for gvSIG to connect to Sensor Observation Services (SOS). The gvSOS client module allows gvSIG users to interact with SOS servers, displaying the information gathered by sensors as a layer composed by features. We present the software engineering development process followed to build the module. For each step of the process we specify the main obstacles found during the development such as restrictions of the gvSIG architecture, inaccuracies in the OGC specifications, and a set of common problems found in current SOS server implementations available on the Internet. For most of the problems found we propose a solution, or at least we present a path that might lead to it