Overview over our architecture
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Pablo map engine
As the basis of all the Coastal Series products are a very flexible map engine which produces both raster and vector maps.
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Designer
To form the visual expression of the map we use a tool that allows the map designer to visualize the various themes in the map.
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Publisher
To handle internet based services we user a map server. This works just like a normal web server, except that it delivers maps and not web pages.
When an request is received and accepted, the general map engine Pablo is used to generate the map.
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IIS
Web applications also consists of normal web pages, and to deliver these we use Microsoft's web server "Internet Information Server".
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Windows applications
Kartagena have designed all tools used for the production in-house, including maintenance and design of maps. Most of these tools have been written for Windows.
It is easy to make such applications since the map engine is implemented in a so-called Active-X component and can be plugged directly into the application.
A product produced in this way is for example Designer.
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Web applications
We make web applications, mainly focused on maps, both for internal use and for external customers as part of our consulting work.
To implement program logic, database access and other special adaptations and functions we use Microsoft's .Net architecture - currently mostly version 2.0.
Some products created in this way are: PrintMap, diverse customer-specific applications, and these web pages.
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SVG
Some times a normal web browser isn't powerful to do all we wish to do in an map application.
(Measuring tools which uses SVG)
To get around this we load an component which supports the graphics standard SVG. We use the latest version from Adobe, which can be downloaded here.
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Javascript library
Map applications are meant for use over the internet where you use a normal web browser to view the maps. There are dozens of different combinations of web browers, platforms and version of these in daily use. This makes it a real challenge to develop programs which look and act the same everywhere.
To achieve this we have developed a library which hides these differences. In this way we can ignore the web browser used, and concentrate on the actual program.
On a higher level we have gathered all general functionality for the handling of maps:
- Support for building and handling of user interfaces
- Communication and synchronization
- Tools for zooming, panning, editing and measuring
- Implementation of a generic ajax solution (which is so popular these days)
- Geometric primitives and operations on them
- Handling the synergy between a detailed map and an overview map
- Communication with the map regardless of if it uses pure HTML or SVG
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