GVSOS: A New Client for OGC SOS Interface Standard

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial Technologies.The popularity of sensor networks has increased very fast recently. A major problem with these networks is achieving interoperability between different networks which are potentially built using different platforms. OGC’s specifications allow clients to access geospatial data without knowing the details about how this data is gathered or stored. Currently OGC is working on an initiative called Sensor Web Enablement (SWE), for specifying interoperability interfaces and metadata encodings that enable real‐time integration of heterogeneous sensor webs into the information infrastructure. In this work we present the implementation of gvSOS, a new module for the GIS gvSIG to connect to Sensor Observation Services (SOS). The SOS client module allows gvSIG users to interact with SOS servers, displaying the information gathered by sensors in a layer composed by features. We present the detailed 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’s specifications, and a set of common problems found in current SOS servers implementations available on the Internet

Measuring complexity in OGC web services XML schemas: pragmatic use and solutions

The use of standards in the geospatial domain, such as those defined by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), for exchanging data has brought a great deal of interoperability upon which systems can be built in a reliable way. Unfortunately, these standards are becoming increasingly complex, making their implementation an arduous task. The use of appropriate software metrics can be very useful to quantify different properties of the standards that ultimately may suggest different solutions to deal with problems related to their complexity. In this regard, we present in this article an attempt to measure the complexity of the schemas associated with the OGC implementation specifications. We use a comprehensive set of metrics to provide a multidimensional view of this complexity. These metrics can be used to evaluate the impact of design decisions, study the evolution of schemas, and so on. We also present and evaluate different solutions that could be applied to overcome some of the problems associated with the complexity of the schemas

Using SWE Standards for Ubiquitous Environmental Sensing: A Performance Analysis

Although smartphone applications represent the most typical data consumer tool from the citizen perspective in environmental applications, they can also be used for in-situ data collection and production in varied scenarios, such as geological sciences and biodiversity. The use of standard protocols, such as SWE, to exchange information between smartphones and sensor infrastructures brings benefits such as interoperability and scalability, but their reliance on XML is a potential problem when large volumes of data are transferred, due to limited bandwidth and processing capabilities on mobile phones. In this article we present a performance analysis about the use of SWE standards in smartphone applications to consume and produce environmental sensor data, analysing to what extent the performance problems related to XML can be alleviated by using alternative uncompressed and compressed formats

Building Standards-Based Geoprocessing Mobile Clients

Ponència presentada en AGILE’2012 International Conference on Geographic Information Science, "Multidisciplinary Research on Geographical Information in Europe and Beyond" celebrat a Avignon, els dies 24-27 d'abril de 2012The adoption of geoprocessing service clients in mobile devices seems to be still rare, even when the communication protocol provided by the Web Processing Service (WPS) seems to fit the philosophy of accessing computation-intensive processes from resourceconstrained devices such as mobile phones. One of the reasons to such a low use of WPS services is that input and output data used in geospatial processes are often encoded in some XML-based format, which demands large processing capabilities for mobile devices. In order to deal with this problem we present the WPS Mobile Framework. This framework provides light-weight libraries to communicate with WPS servers and it carries out automatic generation of XML data binding code for mobile devices tailored to specific application needs

Assessment of OGC Web Processing Services for REST principles

Recent distributed computing trends advocate the use of REpresentational State Transfer (REST) to alleviate the inherent complexity of the web services standards in building service-oriented web applications. In this paper we focus on the particular case of geospatial services interfaced by the OGC web processing service (WPS) specification in order to assess whether WPS-based geospatial services can be viewed from the architectural principles exposed in REST. Our concluding remarks suggest that the adoption of REST principles, to specially harness the built-in mechanisms of the HTTP application protocol, may be beneficial in scenarios where ad hoc composition of geoprocessing services are required, common for most non-expert users of geospatial information infrastructures

Visualization of Sensor Data in Virtual Globes

Ponència presentada en AGILE’2012 International Conference on Geographic Information Science, "Multidisciplinary Research on Geographical Information in Europe and Beyond" celebrat a Avignon, els dies 24-27 d'abril de 2012Virtual Globes have become a common platform for visualizing geographical data. The capability for customization, extensibility and the support of interaction with the visualized elements are some of the aspects to consider when selecting a Virtual Globe for visualization. For visualizing sensor data, aspects such as cardinality, the nature of the data and its temporal and spatial dimensions have to be considered. In this paper we present a prototype application to visualize sensor data retrieved from SOS servers over the NASA World Wind virtual Globe. For implementing the prototype application we relied on a categorization of the sensor data that provides possible visualization methods. The prototype has integrated the SEXTANTE library to enable data analysis over sensor data and include the results as part of the visualizations

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

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 i

Enlace de datos XML para aplicaciones geospaciales para móviles

Las aplicaciones geoespaciales se han vuelto muy comunes tanto en entornos de escritorio, servidor, web, como en entornos móviles. El crecimiento del número de este tipo de aplicación hace necesario la utilización de formatos y protocolos estándares para intercambiar información geospacial. En este sentido los estándares definidos por el Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) constituyen un método efectivo para mejorar la interoperabilidad. El gran número de instancias de servicios OGC disponibles en Internet dan fe del éxito alcanzado por estos estándares. A pesar de esto, el número de aplicaciones de este tipo dirigidas a dispositivos móviles es aún muy bajo. Esto se debe en parte a que la complejidad de los protocolos definidos por los estándares, lo que dificulta enormemente el desarrollo de estas aplicaciones. En este trabajo se presenta una solución que permite la generación automática de código de procesamiento de XML personalizado para aplicaciones móviles basadas en estándares de OGC. La solución propuesta se basa en la observación de que las implementaciones reales se suele utilizar solo un subconjunto de sus esquemas y permite la extracción automática de este subconjunto a partir de un grupo de documentos XML que deben ser procesados por una aplicación en particular

Personalised code generation from large schema sets for geospatial mobile applications

XML and XML Schema are used in the geospatial domain for the definition of standards that enhance the interoperability between producers and consumers of spatial data. The size and complexity of these geospatial standards and their associated schemas have been growing with time reaching levels of complexity that make it difficult to build systems based on them in a timely and cost-effective manner. The problem of producing XML processing code based on large schemas has been traditionally solved by using XML data binding generators. Unfortunately, this solution is not always effective when code is generated for resource-constrained devices, such as mobile phones. Large and complex schemas often result in the production of code with a large size and a complicated structure that might not fit the device limitations. In this article we present the instance-based XML data binding approach to produce more compact application-specific XML processing code for geospatial applications targeted to mobile devices. The approach tries to reduce the size and complexity of the generated code by using information about how schemas are used by individual applications. Our experimental results suggest a significant simplification of XML Schema sets to the real needs of client applications accompanied by a substantial reduction of size of the generated code

Sex differences in oncogenic mutational processes

Funder: Canadian Network for Research and Innovation in Machining Technology, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC Canadian Network for Research and Innovation in Machining Technology); doi: https://doi.org/10.13039/501100002790Funder: Genome Canada (Génome Canada); doi: https://doi.org/10.13039/100008762Funder: Canada Foundation for Innovation (Fondation canadienne pour l'innovation); doi: https://doi.org/10.13039/501100000196Funder: Terry Fox Research Institute (Institut de Recherche Terry Fox); doi: https://doi.org/10.13039/501100004376Abstract: Sex differences have been observed in multiple facets of cancer epidemiology, treatment and biology, and in most cancers outside the sex organs. Efforts to link these clinical differences to specific molecular features have focused on somatic mutations within the coding regions of the genome. Here we report a pan-cancer analysis of sex differences in whole genomes of 1983 tumours of 28 subtypes as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium. We both confirm the results of exome studies, and also uncover previously undescribed sex differences. These include sex-biases in coding and non-coding cancer drivers, mutation prevalence and strikingly, in mutational signatures related to underlying mutational processes. These results underline the pervasiveness of molecular sex differences and strengthen the call for increased consideration of sex in molecular cancer research