SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

Software Engineering



Software Engineering

GIS software is a term that includes a wide range of software tools for creating, manipulating, combining, and analyzing terrestrial spatial data. The leading products provide extensive support for both vector and raster (grid-based) data models, including facilities to convert between the two. More specialized products may focus on one or other area; for example, those products designed to address the needs of remote sensing and environmental analysis are typically raster based, while those addressing the needs of civil engineering and transport applications are typically vector based.

Software Suppliers

GIS software is available from a substantial number of sources, both commercial and noncommercial. The major suppliers of the former include Autodesk, Bentley, ESRI, Intergraph, Leica, and MapInfo. Among the latter, the most notable include the GRASS and IDRISI product sets. There is no publicly available independent source of information providing details of each product, their features and principal application areas, and their market shares. However, it is clear that at present, ESRI, with its flagship ArcGIS suite of products, is the principal specialist commercial supplier of GIS software. In addition, many major information technology (IT) businesses, including Microsoft, Oracle, Google, SAP, and IBM, have substantial operations devoted to GIS software and the related areas of spatial Web-based services and GIS database management systems.

Commercial products rarely provide access to source code or full details of the algorithms employed. Typically, they provide references to books and articles on which the procedure is based, coupled with online help and “white papers” describing their parameters and applications. This means that results produced using one GIS package on a given data set can rarely be exactly matched to those produced using any other package or through handcrafted coding. There are many reasons for these inconsistencies, including differences in the software architectures of the ...