Maguire, James2017-09-262017-09-261999http://hdl.handle.net/10179/12025Geographic 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.enThe AuthorGeographic information systemsData processingComputer programsJava (Computer program language)ThesisQ112849698https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q112849698