An adaptive package architecture for corporate GIS

SUMMARY We introduce a flexible software architecture that overcomes some of the common problems found in corporate GIS environments, especially in the public sector. This three-tier architecture defines a set of software packages that are composed at the server side in response to the needs of each user. The kernel and n external packages are downloaded and configured at run-time, with a middleware layer handling authentication and versioning. To demonstrate the proposed architecture, we present a practical development use case that facilitates the composition of separate free software packages in the GIS domain.