Architecture of the Open Format Converter

Dariusz Mrozek
Dep.of Comp.Sc.,Silesian University of Technology

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     Last modified: July 30, 2004
     Presentation date: 09/13/2004 3:15 PM in FE
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abstracts
Geographic information systems (GIS) are specialized systems that allow to visualize and analyze earth phenomena, prepare planning strategies, predict and explain events and processes. The analysis of spatial information in Earth Sciences often involves data that is distributed in many places and stored in various formats. Many proprietary standards (and versions of these standards) have been designed to store spatial information. That is why, the transfer of data between different systems is a very common problem. The issues of exchange of vast amounts of spatial data, often accompanied by non-spatial (descriptive, quantitative) information are often a source of severe difficulties. Another type of troublesome conversions is vector-to-raster and raster-to-vector conversions.
The paper presents the architecture of the Open Format Converter, which enables the conversion of vector geospatial data to various formats. The Open Format Converter defines the framework for multipurpose converter that is easy to extend far beyond the proposed, implemented geospatial formats.