JGrass, a multi-platform, multi-session GRASS - the framework and features

John Preston
ICENS, University of the West Indies

     Full text: Not available
     Last modified: April 29, 2004
     Presentation date: 09/13/2004 9:00 AM in FE
     (View Schedule)

abstracts
The Geographic Resource Analysis Support Software (GRASS) is the largest
Geographical Information System (GIS) open source software project.
From its birth in 1982 at the US. Army Corp of Engineers Laboratories (CERL) in Illinios,
it has found its way into many Universities and Research Laboratories.
Its wide array of raster, vector, point, image processing, graphics
production capabilities, and extensability through source code availability has kept it alive.
However, one of the main obstacles to its widespread adoption
by GIS professionals in production environments is its lack of a modern graphical user interface (GUI)
with all the attendant benifits, and major portability issuses with the Windows and Macintosh
computer systems. To address these issues a development effort has commenced
that seeks to move GRASS into the main stream of GIS software used by researchers
and professionals across all the major computer operating systems.

JGrass as it is named, combines GRASS and the Java programming paradigm to achive
a portable, modular, and extensible GIS for the 21st century.
The goals of the JGRASS project are to improve:

* Portability, enabling GRASS to be fully functional on the
Windows, Unix/Linux and Mac-OS platforms;
* Extensibility, providing a framework for the incorporation
of user developed modules and providing specialised functions
for visual representations or graphical interaction with
the map data;
* Standalone/Networked Access, allowing standalone operation
interacting with local and networked databases,
but also allowing access to group based spatial processing
capabilities;
* Scripting, providing a java based scripting engine to allow
the development of application scripts;
* The ease of Use, providing missing features
common to state of the art GIS applications, expecially in the
fields of printing and creation of artworks.

JGrass will have a new graphics system based on OpenGL, offering both
2D and 3D display capabilities, a terrain engine for view-dependent
visualization of large surfaces, an interactive legend, and interactive
selection of viewing parameters. It is modular in design, providing a
base framework and plugin architecture that allows the structured addition
of user developed modules. It features an application model where users
define mapsets, databases, menus, scripts and other data entities linked
to a single theme, which can be accessed concurrently.

An icon controlled printing system allows easy production of hardcopy maps
in various formats and for different output devices.
A standardized data access model provides a consistent way for all commands to access data
from either GRASS database files or databases via jdbc.

The choice of Java as the operating environment and programming platform will
provide an ''industrial-strength'' runtime environment, and robust development
support in terms of syntax and libraries, to help users utilise
a broad spectrum of hardware and software open source tools.

JGrass will provide a stable base to carry GRASS users into the future.