Specifying the Technology Viewpoint for a Corporate Spatial Data

Infrastructure using ICA's Formal Model

Rubens Moraes Torres

, Italo Lopes Oliveira

, Jugurta Lisboa-Filho

Carlos Alberto Moura

and Alexander Gonçalves Silva

Departamento de Informática, Universidade Federal de Viçosa, Viçosa, MG, Brazil

Departamento de Informática e Estatística – Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, SC, Brazil

³Companhia Energética de Minas Gerais (Cemig), Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil,

Keywords: Spatial Data Infrastructure, RM-ODP, Technology Viewpoint, ICA Model, SDI-Cemig.

Abstract: In the quest to create a formal model for the development of Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI), the

International Cartographic Association (ICA) has proposed a model based on the RM-ODP framework to

describe SDIs regardless of the implementation and technology. The RM-ODP framework comprises five

viewpoints. The ICA has proposed the specification of the Enterprise, Computation, and Information

viewpoints while the Engineering and Technology viewpoints are yet to be specified. The Companhia

Energética de Minas Gerais (Minas Gerais Power Company - Cemig) develops an SDI, called SDI-Cemig,

aiming to facilitate the discovery, sharing, and use of geospatial data among its employees, partner companies,

and consumers. This study presents the specification of the technologies that comprise the components of

SDI-Cemig using the Technology viewpoint integrated to ICA’s formal model.

1 INTRODUCTION

Users work with a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI)

in order to recover or perform operations with

geospatial data (e.g., converting geographic

coordinate systems), which enable spatial-temporal

analyses and the use of decision-making support

mechanisms (Jhummarwala et al., 2014).

Based on the SDI concept, several initiatives both

in the public and private sectors have been developed

for the use, sharing, and recovery of geospatial data

aiming to create an environment in which people can

cooperate with each other and interact to reach

political and administrative goals in an optimized

manner (Alencar et al., 2013). According to Harvey

et al. (2012), SDIs improve the sharing and use of

geospatial services and helps different users of a

given community.

The Companhia Energética de Minas Gerais

(Minas Gerais Power Company – Cemig) is a

company acting in the power sector in Brazil,

currently a corporation comprehending over 200

businesses, that delves in power generation,

transmission, and distribution, besides gas

distribution and communications networks (Cemig,

2016).

Cemig develops an SDI called SDI-Cemig aiming

to help its employees, partner companies, and clients

share and discover geospatial data. The company has

created a project with the participation of other

governmental organizations in order to create this

SDI. The research and development project

“Geoportal Cemig – SDI-Based Corporate GIS” is the

result of a partnership between Cemig and the

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas

Gerais (Research Support Foundation of the State of

Minas Gerais - Fapemig). One of the goals of this

project consists in creating a method to develop

corporate SDIs (Alves et al., 2016).

For SDI specification and development, the

International Cartographic Association (ICA)

proposes a model based on the Reference Model for

Open Distributed Processing (RM-ODP) framework.

ICA’s model for SDI specification describes three of

the five viewpoints in the RM-ODP framework:

Enterprise, Information (Hjelmager et al., 2008), and

Computation (Cooper et al., 2013). The other two

viewpoints of the framework, Engineering and

Technology, have not been described in ICA’s model

and were left open with the caveat of being dependent

on the implementation to be used (Cooper et al.,

2011).

Torres, R., Oliveira, I., Lisboa-Filho, J., Moura, C. and Silva, A.

Specifying the Technology Viewpoint for a Corporate Spatial Data Infrastructure using ICA’s Formal Model.

DOI: 10.5220/0006311503330340

In Proceedings of the 19th Inter national Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2017) - Volume 2, pages 333-340

ISBN: 978-989-758-248-6

333

Other researchers have extended the Enterprise

viewpoint, specializing the description of the actors

and policies of an SDI (Cooper et al., 2011; Béjar et

al., 2012; Oliveira and Lisboa-Filho, 2015).

According to Oliveira et al. (2016a), ICA’s formal

model can be used to specify corporate SDIs. Torres

et al. (2016) developed a modeling on the engineering

viewpoint for a corporate SDI based on the RM-ODP

model.

According to Putman (2000), the Technology

viewpoint enables specifying an architecture of

technologies to be employed in the implementation of

hardware and software according to the features

described in the other four viewpoints.

This way, this paper presents the specification of

the Technology viewpoint for SDI-Cemig based on

ICA’s adapted formal model for SDI. The paper is

structured as follows. Section 2 describes ICA’s

formal SDI model. Section 3 presents the

specification of the Technology viewpoint for the

case study of SDI-Cemig. Section 4 presents the final

considerations and possible future works.

2 ICA’S FORMAL MODEL FOR

SDI SPECIFICATION

RM-ODP is a framework for the specification of

heterogeneous distributed systems that provides

distribution, interoperability, portability, and

platform and technology independence (Farooqui et

al., 1995). The framework results from a partnership

among the International Organization for

Standardization (ISO), the International

Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), and the

Telecommunication Standardization Sector

(Raymond, 1995).

The RM-ODP framework is made up of five

viewpoints, each one representing an architectural

viewpoint of the system (Egyhazy, 2004). Since each

viewpoint does not represent an isolated part of the

system, it describes a different way of observing the

same system (Putman, 2000). By using these

viewpoints, the model is specified in five smaller

models, where each viewpoint deals with specific

relevant issues for different users (Linington et al.,

2011).

Figure 1 illustrates the five viewpoints of the RM-

ODP model. The definitions proposed by Linington

et al. (2011) and Putman (2000) on each viewpoint

are summarized below:

Figure 1: RM-ODP framework viewpoints – Adapted from

Hjelmager et al. (2008).

 The Enterprise viewpoint is responsible for the

scope and policies for project composition, the

step in which the system requirements will be

defined.

 The Information viewpoint works with semantics

of the information and its processing, describing

the structures and types of data used in the system.

 The Computation viewpoint is related to

functionalities, whose viewpoint of the system is

a division of several functionalities. In this view,

there is concern in describing the functionalities

provided by the system in terms of objects and

those functionalities are broken down into

functional objects with interaction through their

own interfaces.

 The Engineering viewpoint is built observing

mechanisms and features needed to support

interactions among the system functionalities

described in the Computation viewpoint. There is

concern in defining logical units for processing

and information, focusing on its logical

distribution, as well as its communication in terms

of communication channels. Moreover, the

Engineering viewpoint focuses on the distribution

among components and channels for its

communication.

 The Technology viewpoint is related to the needs

of the system regarding the technologies required.

It describes the technologies for information

processing, functionalities, and visualization.

In Hjelmager et al. (2008), the ICA proposed

using the RM-ODP model as a reference to design

and create an SDI. By using it, one can model the data

semantics, policies (Hjelmager et al., 2008), actors

(Hjelmager, 2008; Cooper et al., 2011), objects, and

functionalities required in an SDI (Cooper et al.,

2013). The model has the advantage of being highly

independent from implementation and technology

(Hjelmager et al., 2008). Organizations at different

levels (e.g., national, regional, local, corporate) can

use the same modeling when implementing their SDIs

and one organization may choose to use a specific set

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334

of technologies while another may implement the

project with a different set (Putman, 2000).

This study approaches the Technology viewpoint

of SDI-Cemig. The definitions detailed in the

Enterprise and Information viewpoints can be found

in Oliveira and Lisboa-Filho (2015) and Oliveira et

al. (2016a), the Computation viewpoint was

presented in Oliveira et al. (2016b), and the

Engineering viewpoint was presented in Torres et al.

(2016).

2.1 Technology Viewpoint

According to Putman (2000), the Technology

viewpoint provides a view in terms of software and

hardware in the construction of the system, minimum

technology requirements needed, as well as evolution

of its useful life. This viewpoint represents a concrete

view of the components created in the other

viewpoints of the RM-ODP framework aiming to

describe the components that will receive the

products and technologies for the implementation,

besides allowing the components to be verified for

adequacy (Raymond, 1995).

The RM-ODP model provides structures to be

used in its composition during creation. The ISO/IEC

10746-3:2009(E) (2010) norm describes the

following structures to be used when creating the

Technology viewpoint: Technological Object;

Implementation Standard, and IXIT (Implementation

eXtra Information for Testing).

The technological specification is based on the

use of Technological Objects, components that

abstract a piece of hardware or software to be used in

the system implementation (Linington et al., 2011).

According to Wnuk et al. (2014), the

compatibility among distinct technologies is

constantly advancing. Companies that develop

hardware and software tend to create their products so

that they are increasingly more compatible with

technologies from other manufacturers for them to be

able to work along in a harmonious and functional

manner. However, some technologies are still

incompatible among themselves. Given this possible

incompatibility, schemas relating the set of

components and technologies used to verify the

system’s compatibility and performance must be

specified (Linington et al., 2011). In order to cover

this demand, the RM-ODP model recommends the

definition of Project Implementation Standards, a

diagram in which the technologies employed are

specified related to their respective Technological

Objects (ISO/IEC 10746-3:2009(E), 2010).

Technological Objects may be followed by basic

information to be verified in its implementation and

test. In order to add this content, the RM-ODP

framework defines the IXIT (Implementation eXtra

Information for Testing) concept. IXIT contains extra

information that guides the project implementation to

verify its basic functioning needs. Its creation consists

in text elements attached to the Technological Objects

to be specified (Putman, 2000).

3 SPECIFICATION OF THE

TECHNOLOGY VIEWPOINT:

SDI-Cemig CASE STUDY

This section presents the specification of the

Technology viewpoint of SDI-Cemig. The elements

of this viewpoint were specified according to the

components documented in the viewpoints Enterprise

(Oliveira et al., 2016b), Computation (Oliveira et al.,

2016a) and Engineering (Torres et al., 2016).

The diagram created consists in nine

Technological Objects representing firewalls,

networks, servers, and the system user as illustrated

in Figure 2. Its creation is based on the requirements

described by the previous viewpoints of ICA’s model

for the SDI-Cemig model in Oliveira et al. (2016b),

Oliveira et al. (2016a), and Torres et al. (2016) and by

Cemig’s Technical Report N.002/2016 (Alves et al.,

2016).

The element RemoteSystem represents a system

user who wishes to access SDI-Cemig. To that end,

the user has two interfaces: A web browser and

services for communication with traditional

softwares for Geographic Information System (GIS)

handling. There are two Technological Objects

representing firewalls for access control to the

system.

The first element, ExternalFirewall, consists

in a protection against external breaches and

unauthorized access, controlling all connections

among the servers in the CemigLAN network with

computers in external WAN networks. The second

firewall, InternalFirewall, consists in extra protection

for the access to information for the component

DataServer, a server containing geographic

information and managed by a database.

Its creation complies with a norm by Cemig

according to which there must be extra protection for

the access to the server storing geographic data

(Alves et al., 2016).

The other Technological Objects represent four

servers responsible for several features in the system.

They are made up of the following components:

PortalCemigServer, CataloguerServer, DataServer,

Specifying the Technology Viewpoint for a Corporate Spatial Data Infrastructure using ICA’s Formal Model

335

Figure 2: Technological Objects of SDI-Cemig.

and MapsManagerServer.

The Technological Object DataServer represents

a server where geographic information is stored. It

stores information in a database capable of storing

and managing spatial data.

MapsManagerServer is a server responsible for

generating a graphical visualization of data from

information provided by the object DataServer. It

must reply to calls from web browsers and web

services.

CataloguerServer consists in a server that

provides a catalog with geographic information

available for the user in the database. The information

must be provided along with their metadata, which

follow the Brazilian Geospatial Metadata Profile

(MGB) (CONCAR, 2009).

Finally, the object PortalCemigServer consists in

a server in charge of providing a web interface for the

object RemoteSystem, whose interface allows

accessing the following system functionalities for the

Engineering viewpoint (Torres et al., 2016):

PortraitSDICemigOps, DataSDICemigOps, and

CatalogSDICemigOps. In order to meet those needs,

the server communicates with the objects

MapsManagerServer for map generation,

CataloguerServer to obtain a data catalog, and

DataServer to obtain geographic data from the

geographic information database.

Fonseca (2016) analyzed and compared several

softwares and technologies available on the market to

be used in SDI implementations. That study proposed

several tools to work with components in an SDI,

such as a map server, data server, and information

catalog.

PortalCemigServer is responsible for the

browsing interface using technologies that may be

implemented on a website (e.g., OpenLayers,

AngularJS). To that end, the technologies chosen are

familiar to the company and preferred by it (Alves et

al., 2016).

For the construction of internal components of the

servers MapsManagerServer, CataloguerServer, and

DataServer, which have specialized purposes, the

technologies chosen were suggested by Fonseca

(2016) and comply with CEMIG. Figure 3 illustrates

the use of those technologies linked to their respective

Technological Objects.

The PortalCemigServer server has the

components PresentationWeb and Control. The

component PresentationWeb represents the system

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336

visualization layer and the use of the AngularJS

framework was proposed for its construction. For the

component Control, the Ruby on Rails

framework

was designated.

For the servers MapsManagerServer,

CataloguerServer, and DataServer, the softwares

MapServer

, GeoNetwork

, and PostgreSQL

respectively, were designated.

Those softwares, according to Fonseca (2016), are

well adequated as components when building SDIs.

Aiming to contemplate the need to replicate data in

the Engineering viewpoint (Torres, 2016), the server

DataServer uses the technology Redundant Array of

Independent Disks (RAID) for the component

Storage (Ellis et al., 1996).

The component RemoteSystem has the element

NavigatorRequest, which is represented by a browser

that uses HyperText Markup Language 5 (HTML5)

to access the system via the web.

The components CemigLAN, WAN,

ExternalFirewall, and InternalFirewall do not have

extra specification for being established standards

representing networks and firewalls.

Figure 4 represents the IXIT diagram of the SDI-

Cemig model. The diagram contains additional

information that must be observed in the

technological implementation process. The

operational system versions are defined by Cemig and

do not restrict migrating to another system as long as

based on a Linux environment.

Hardware specifications represent the minimum

hardware that must be used in the project and are

based on the minimum specifications defined by each

respective technology provider. The software

versions defined are the current versions and serve as

guidance, with no restriction against the use of a more

recent version. However, the use of new versions

requires the verification of continued compatibility

and interoperability among the technologies

employed. New system functionalities can be

included with the creation of new technological

components provided that those components have a

communication interface in common with the rest of

the system and have a service-oriented

communication architecture.

The IXIT diagram describes the main

communication rules that must be verified in the

implementation among components. The

RemoteSystem must have software compatible with

___________________________

https://angularjs.org/

http://rubyonrails.org/

the Web Map Service (WMS) and Web Feature

Service (WFS) standards for the use of different web

services, whether from other SDIs or not, and

HTML5 for the browser interface. CataloguerServer,

with the use of GeoNetwork, must be able to access

the GeoServer software and the PortalCemigServer

component through a Representational State Transfer

(REST) interface (Fielding, 2000).

MapsManagerServer must allow access through the

WMS and WMF standards. PortalCemigServer and

DataServer must communicate based on REST.

The Technology viewpoint (Figure 3) implements

the components described in terms of functionalities

by the Computation viewpoint of SDI-Cemig

(Oliveira et al., 2016a). The elements of the

Technology viewpoint are listed below with their

corresponding components in the Computation

viewpoint:

 The component RemoteSystem corresponds to the

components User, Provider, Operational Body,

and Cataloguer;

 PortalCemigServer contemplates the user

interfaces proposed in the package

User_Interfaces;

 The server MapsManagerServer serves

Portrayal_SDI-Cemig, responsible for map

visualization;

 CataloguerServer serves Metadata_Management

and Catalog_Management for information

cataloging along with their corresponding

metadata;

 DataServer contemplates the objects Data_SDI-

Cemig, Data_Vectors_Management, and

Data_Rasters_Management, responsible for the

management of information in the database.

http://www.mapserver.org/

http://geonetwork-opensource.org/

http://www.postgresql.org/

Specifying the Technology Viewpoint for a Corporate Spatial Data Infrastructure using ICA’s Formal Model

337

Figure 3: Standards for SDI-Cemig implementation.

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338

Figure 4: IXIT diagram for SDI-Cemig.

4 FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

With the specification of the fifth viewpoint of ICA’s

model, SDI-Cemig has a model contemplating all five

viewpoints of the RM-ODP framework, which allows

the model to be consulted as a whole. In other words,

the specification of all viewpoints provides an

overall, specialized view of SDI-Cemig.

The Technology viewpoint comprises

Technological Objects representing from physical

components to functionalities, where they are

organized independently and isolated from each

other. Its communication is performed through a

service-oriented architecture in which a

Technological Object makes a request to another

component through a common communication

interface.

Although the viewpoint created defines

technologies to be used in the implementation of a

corporation, the specification of the Technology

viewpoint for SDI-Cemig suggests that a similar

specification could be used in other SDIs not only

corporate and related to the power sector, but also at

different levels (e.g., regional, national, local). In case

changes are desired, such as switching technologies,

the model made up of modules allows for those

changes as long as the new technology meets the

Specifying the Technology Viewpoint for a Corporate Spatial Data Infrastructure using ICA’s Formal Model

339

requirements described in the viewpoint. The use of

independent modules makes it easier to include new

functionalities in the system since new components

may be added with no significant changes to the

project.

As future works, it would be important to apply

ICA’s formal model onto broader SDIs such as at the

regional and national levels.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research project was partially funded by

Fapemig and CAPES, along with Cemig.

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