Backend and frontend strategies for deployment of WebGIS services

Nowadays, improving of accessibility of cloud computing services leads to increasing amount of WebGIS applications. First, internet maps were managed as static files. Then, interaction was implemented by Common Gateway Interface and server-side programming languages. Currently, WebGIS are built on top of advanced Web 2.0 solutions. Geo-Spatial Data Repository (GSDR) is a web service developing for quality assessment of open geo-spatial data. GSDR is deployed in a computing cloud. A non-blocking web server allows handling multiple concurrent intensive requests. Requests can implement geoprocessing tasks required by users. Tasks are processed in-parallel using multiple CPUs. Utilization of Open Source GIS libraries enables to implement various geo-spatial algorithms. A central database allows multiple concurrent connections. One of the most important challenges for modern WebGIS applications is providing responsive design suitable for different devices, such as desktop computers, laptops, tablets and smart phones. GSDR’s frontend provides a generic responsive web design solutions, which may be applied for other map-based applications. The design approach was tested on various web maps implementing multiple visualization techniques including regular feature visualization by various shapes, colors and sizes, as well as, heatmap and tile-based visualization. The found solutions were modularized into a set of relatively independent projects providing the source code and instructions. These projects are available through a number of public version control repositories. One can easily evaluate and utilize the described backend and frontend strategies for any kind of WebGIS applications.