SIG-DDS: a Grid-based Remote Sensing Data Distribution System

Data distribution is one of the most important steps for the remote sensing applications; it depends on the Remote Sensing Data Distribution System (RS-DDS). The conventional RS-DDS such as GCMD Mapserver [1] or CEOP [2] often provides a web based user interface and supports little data types only. Although the WCS [3]/WFS [4]/WMS [5] purposed by OGC try to make it possible for applications to access heterogeneous data through a universal interface, it is still hard to be used because of the absent of data searching and difficulty of application programming. The distributed integrated applications are eager for a distributed, extensible, and co-operable RS-DDS which can distribute different types, different formats, and different goals RS-data in one system. Spatial Information Grid (shortly SIG) is a kind of application grid; it is built on the general grid and provides a perfect infrastructure for distributed spatial information applications. Based on SIG, a 3-layered remote sensing data distribution system named SIG-DDS is designed and implemented in this paper. It can be deployed in many java-based dynamic web servers such as Apache Tomcat which passes the test.