The development of a Java based GIS viewing tool : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Technology in Information Engineering at Massey University

Abstract

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) industry sources quote the ratio of power users to casual users at 1000:1, within New Zealand this figure has been found to be 30:1. The casual user is often under-supported, with slow and cumbersome viewing tools. This project implements a full data download system in Java for use with Genasys (New Zealand) GIS software. Three components were developed; a vector data handler, an image download system, and a database client. These components were integrated to form a powerful client that offered a significant performance increase over the "server based" client. The image download system outperformed the "server based" client by over 400%. The vector data handler outperformed the "server based" client by over 50%, while the database client was over 250% quicker. GIS users rated all components to be of significant benefit, offering improved performance over their current GIS viewing tools. The work completed in this thesis provides Genasys (New Zealand) a useful tool to enable powerful, fast and stable Java based GIS viewing clients. Keywords: GIS, Java, computer graphics, image pyramid.