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Generating online map for Skudai using the Minnesota Map Server
Boonheng Beh and Alias Abdul Rahman
Department of Geoinformatic, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 UTM
Skudai, Johor, Malaysia.
alias@fksg.utm.my
1. Introduction
World Wide Web (WWW) technology helps to disseminate geographic information globally via web-based GIS. There are a number of web-based GIS in the market, either commercial-of-the-shelf (C.O.T.S) or free map servers. Examples of commercial products like ArcIMS (from ESRI), MapGuide (from Integraph), and MapXtream (from MapInfo). Free map servers such as Minnesota Map Server. To implement an Internet-based GIS, a map server is required as a middleware program in retrieving data from the database (Alias Abdul Rahman, 2002). Obviously, in order to use these commercial map servers, users have to purchase the map server software and maintenance fee as well. On the other hand, free map servers offer Internet mapping for small-budget users. Besides the Minnesota Map Server, other free map servers are GeoTools, JShape, iMapper, and MapIT. This project attempts to generate an online map for Skudai by using the Minnesota Map Server and investigate its mapping capability.
This paper describes the process of implementing the Skudai online map. In section 2, we present the study area and scope of this project. We briefly introduce the system architecture of the Minnesota Map Server and its content in section 3. Section 4 presents the online mapping implementation. Finally, we discuss some good and drawbacks of the map server in section 5.
2. The study area and scope
The scope of this study is to utilize the free map server (Minnesota Map Server) for online mapping of Skudai area and with the following hardware and software:
- Pentium 3 Personal computer (PC),
- Memory (RAM): 130,352 Mhz RAM,
- Microsoft Windows 2000 server OS,
- Web Server: Internet Information Service (IIS), and
- Map Server: Mapserv version 3.6.3
The datasets of Skudai area comes from the Jabatan Perancangan Bandar dan Desa Negeri Johor (JPBD) that is the Department of Town Planning in Johor. Other attribute data comes from the Majlis Perbandaran Johor Bahru Tengah (MPJBT).
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