The Bentley Geospatial Server solves a problem in the market of too much information to deal with. If data isn’t managed properly, you’re at risk of poor decisions with your data. The Geospatial Server brings together both structured information (shape files, dgn, dfx, etc.) and unstructured data (Word files, Excel, etc…). The Gartner Group indicates that 85% of business is conducted on unstructured data.
Without a cataloging of data you’re in danger of data collection and data access inefficiencies, including the possibilities of redoing work that’s already been completed. You’re also in danger of spending too much time and money finding your data with different systems and interfaces that can’t share information. This leads to inefficiencies in project management, managing historical data, problems in the field extracting and collecting the right data, and high costs for printing data in paper form.
The Geospatial Server provides a federated information management approach similar to web search engines, providing access to data whether this information is structured or unstructured. The core geospatial server technology can also be extended with a portfolio of different integrated add-on capabilities that are tailored for geospatial needs. These include spatial indexing and search service tools, workflow management services, plotting services, spatial database service to tie to Oracle and others, document services, and tools to build indexes and metadata capture. The Geospatial Server keeps track of relationships between data so that they’re not broken even if they’re moved within your system.
The spatial indexing and searching service can return a simple list of documents related to a certain geographic point or it allows you to view the assembled data and documents on a map view, without having to open the individual files. Document content indexing that is run on the server, can catalog based on project number or parcel number or mention of specific keywords in the text. There’s also the ability to do feature indexing, where specific geometries and attributes can be indexed on spatial and non-spatial criteria. The process of porting data to the Geospatial Server is similar to creating a geodatabase, but there’s no need to create the schema up front.
Cataloging your data in this way also provides for versional search between feature classes and documents. And to associate the search results to the data and documents doesn’t require you to modify each document. This indexing also helps you to discover duplicates through the system.
The Geospatial Server approach makes a lot of sense for organizations that have a heavy mix of geospatial data and design documents. But it also makes great sense for any shop where both CAD and GIS are used extensively, which includes a lot of application areas.
(The text of this post comes from a presentation at BE 2008 that was given by Alain Lapierre, Software Chief Architect for Bentley’s geospatial division.)
