Journal of Geographic Information System, 2010, 2, 32-39
doi:10.4236/jgis.2010.21007 Published Online January 2010 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/jgis)
The Research and Design of the Application Do-
main Building Based on GridGIS
Zhong XIE1, Lina MA1,2, Liang W U1, Z hanlong CHEN1,2
1Faculty of Information Engineering, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan,, China
2Information Technology Institute, Beijing Union University, Beijing, China
Abstract: According to the characteristic of Grid geographical information system (GridGIS), data distribu-
tion, heterogeneity and diversity in the grid environment, combining the high demand for shared resources
and the purpose to realize unified and efficient management and sharing of distributed and mass resources,
this paper proposed a grid GIS application building program on a number of peer-to-peer global Managers
designs. This paper discussed the building process of the application domain, the selection criteria of applica-
tion domain manager, the database design of application domain, and every service function module design
of application domain. The integration of the application domain builds the three-tier management system of
the node, the application domain, and the global management. The spatial query tests of distributed environ-
ment have shown that, the application domain is established to manage and share the distributed resources ef-
ficiently, and enhance the business processing functions in the grid environment.
Keywords: GridGIS, Grid, global manager, application domain, application domain manager
1. Introduction
GridGIS, combining with GIS, is the trend of grid de-
velopment and grid computing technology, GridGIS in-
tegrates the geographically distributed and heterogeneous
systems of various spatial data server computers, large-
scale retrieval storage systems, geographic information
systems, virtual reality systems and so on. By high-speed
internet connection, it forms the virtual super-processing
environment of spatial resources information which is
transparent to the user [1]. With the continuous devel-
opment and improvement of GridGIS, we must deal with
a wider range of resources, and resources will become
increasingly distributed and heterogeneous. How to con-
gregate the mass distribution of the resources, carry out
efficient and unified management and share application
are what we needs to consider.
There is not an ideal model for the grid distributed re-
source management. The centralized resources manage-
ment in which system directory is only stored in a central
node [2], inevitably can’t work well and the node is low
self-governing. A number of global managers used in this
article solved performance bottleneck of the centralized
management and improved the system stability.
The author of this paper discussed the application do-
main from the following aspects: the program to build
the application domain, the application domain database
1design, and every service function module design of ap-
plication domain. We build the application domain which
discovers resource and meets the high demand of distrib-
uted business applications, and achieves efficient man-
agement and shares the resources in GridGIS system.
2. The Building Program of the Application
Domain and the Selection of Application
Domain Manager
2.1. The Grid-Related Definition Set
According to the standard definition of the grid in con-
junction with study design of this paper, we give some
definitions of terms for this grid resource management
and sharing application:
Node: the computer which deploys middleware of Gri-
dGIS and provides the local grid services.
Grid System: the collection of all available nodes.
Global Manager: a group of grid node s provides glob-
al grid directory service and the application domain man-
agement with the function of simultaneous update fea-
tures. It is also the virtual organization.
1 Supported projects: 1,the National High Technology Research and
Development Program (863 program) major project “Grid GIS soft-
ware and its major application”-software development of Grid-
GIS(number: 2007AA120503); 2, The Project was Supported by the
Special Fund for Basic Scientific Research of Central Colleges,
China University of Geosciences(Wuhan)(number: CUGL090251); 3,
Programs national natural science foundation of China(number:
40771165
)
.

Z. XIE ET AL.
33
Application domain: Based on application requireme-
nts, the application will contain the resource implications
of nodes, and integrates the nodes to form the application
domain.
Application domain manag er: a node in an application
domain which manages information of this domain, mai-
ntains data synchronization with the global manager, and
provides customer with management and applications, in
order to realize the specific functions of application do-
main.
2.2. Resource Managing Program Introduction
in the Gridgis Environment
The GridGIS system of this paper uses several peer to
peer Global Managers and several Application domain
managers. The system contains multiple peer to peer
such global managers, and every global manager associ-
ates with multiple application domains. As global man-
agers are equal, the resource information update and ex-
change among the global managers, global manager and
application domain manager ensures integrity of all in-
formation of the application domain. It realized the effi-
cient management of large and distributed resources.
2.3. Build the Application Domain of Gridgis and
Select the Application Domain Manager
The application domain is the finer granularity of self-
Virtual Organization (VO) which is dynamically com-
posed of grid nodes, depending on the application re-
quirements in the grid environment. Through the grid
environment, different people and organizations access a
variety of data and have different application require-
ments. To better manage resources and provide services,
GridGIS administrator must analyze the requirements,
and propose common attribute, according to a specific
application to construct the application domain from the
information in Global Manager.
GridGIS administrator inputs conditions of application
domain constructing, global manager queries all nodes
information which stored in itself, and then sends back
the qualified nodes to the global administrator. The glob-
al administrator selects appropriate number of nodes ac-
cording to the node in formation, service in formation, sp a-
tial data directory information, as well as specific appli-
cation. At the same time the GridGIS system automati-
cally specify a node from the selected nodes for the ap-
plication domain manager, and then the construction of
an application domain is completed.
At the time of the application domain cons truction, th e
information related the application domain is stored in
the global manager, and the global manager maps the
information to corresponding application domain man-
ager. So, from the global manager, this application do-
main gets information table of the nodes, the application
domain services table, the application domain resources
directory table, the application domain roles table and the
application domain permission table.
In fact, application domain manager should be se-
lected in accordance with optimal principles. And this
paper adopts such principles: the best machine perform-
ance of all nodes in this application domain, shortest path,
and the highest score for the qu ality of service. Based on
all the above principles, application domain manager will
automatically select a node as the application domain
manager.
As shown in Figure 1,The functio ns of the application
domain manager can be mainly divided into: nodes in-
formation management of the application domain, secu-
rity management of the application domain, and spatial
processing operations and life-cycle management.
Node information management mainly contains: add,
delete, search and change the node information. Applica-
tion domain security management mainly contains con-
trol and manages the roles and permissions. The maps
processing function of application domain manager is
mainly to provide a number of map operation services,
such as space for display, query and analysis.
Figure 1. Modules introduction of the application domain Manage

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34
Figure 2. the tables design of application domain database
Figure 3. the entire call flow figure of the application domain services
3. The Application Domain Database Design
Application Domain Manager uses Oracle 9i database to
store all the information of the application domain. The
nodes where each application domain manager located
all deploy a database. Tables in a database are mainly-
consists of three categories: security management data
tables, application domain information management data
tables and spatial functional data tables. As shown in
Figure 2.
Security management data tables are used to store the
information of users, roles, permissions, and mapping
relations between the roles and the permissions. The
corresponding data tables are D_UserInfo(user informa-
tion tables), D_RoleInfo(role information tables), D_
PermissionInfo (permission information tables), and
D_RPMap(mapping relation tab les between th e ro les and
the permissions).
Information management data tables of application
domain are used to store their own attribute information
related to the application domain, the provided service
information, and the node information managed by the
application domain. The corresponding data tables are
D_Domain(attribute information of application domain
tables), D_ServiceInfo(service information of application
domain tables),and D_Node(node information of appli-
cation dom ai n t a bl es) .
Spatial functional data tab les are used to store the spa-
tial data information of the nodes managed by the appli-
cation domain. The corresponding data table is Domain-
SpatialMetadata (spatial data information tables).
4. The Application Domain Service Function
Design
The entire call flow chart of the application domain ser-
vices is shown in Figure 3:

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35
4.1. Security Management Service of Application
Domain
This Service provides security management function
related to the application domain, which divides into
user information management, role information man-
agement, permission information management and rol-
epermission mapping relationship management.
4.1.1. User Information Management Service
User information management has two parts, one is that
the user manages their own information, such as registra-
tion and personal information changes. The other is the
administrator manages user information, such as delete
and modify user information.
User needs to register first, and after the successful
registration, some of the information can be modified.
Figure 4 shows the scheme of user registration and man-
agement. During the registration, through the portal cli-
ent, the user logs on to the registration page, by filling
out the registration information, sends a request to the
global manager which accepts the request and judges the
information the user filled out, if the validation is went
through then sends update information request to appli-
cation domain manager and notifies the user that the reg-
istration is successful. Otherwise, refuses user to register,
sends failed registration message.
Administrator manages user information service which
mainly provides modify and delete user information
When a new user register, the administrator assign roles
to user. Administrator also has the right to delete users.
The process of user information management is shown in
Figure 5.
When a new user registration is successful, the appli-
cation domain administrator calls the user information
management service to set the user’s role information
and other information, and assign user specific roles.
Figure 4. User Registration and Management
Figure 5. User Information Management

Z. XIE ET AL.
36
Figure 6. Role Information Management
administrator manages
permissions
operation type
modify
permissions
information
delete
permissions
modify delete
change global
database
operate
successfully
add user
permissions
query
permissions
information
add query
update application
domain database
maintain data
synchronization
Figure 7. permissions management service
When you modify the data table of user information
successfully, it will send the successful operation mes-
sage to the client. Otherwise, send the failed operation
message. During the running of application domain, the
application domain administrator can modify specific
user information according to the requirement.
After modify the user's information in application do-
main, it also needs to maintain data synchronization with
the global manager. The application domain manager
will send update request to global manager to maintain
data synchronization.
4.1.2. Role Information Management Service
The application domain administrator designs the types
of roles according to the requirement. Each role corre-
sponds to a certain degree of Permission. The application
domain administrator develops new roles, modifies and
deletes the roles through the portlet managed by portal-
side role. Figure 6 shows the scheme of user information
management.
The application domain administrator manage roles in
application domain by calling roles management service,
it mainly includ es add, delete, qu ery and modify role in f-
ormation. It will return the successful operation message
after the roles database is modified successfully, other-
wise return fai l e d op eration mes sage .
It is required to maintain data synchron ization with the
global manager while application domain administrator
modifies the role information in application domain. The
application domain manager will call the synchronous
updating service to the global manager to ensure the in-
formation consensus at both ends.
4.1.3. Permissions I nfor mation Manage ment Service
The administrator of application domain can add, modify
or remove permissions according to the application re-
quirement. Figure 7 shows the scheme of permissions
management service.

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37
Through calling the permissions management service,
the administrator can manage the permissions which
mainly includes add, remove, query and modify permis-
sions information. It returns successful operation mes-
sage when the permissions of database are modified
successfully, otherwise returns failed ope rat ion message.
4.2. Application Domain Information
Management Service
The application domain node management service pro-
vides information management service of application
domain, node list information and service description list
services.
4.2.1. Node Information Management Service
The application domain manager needs to preserve the
address of the node information, the spatial data infor-
mation in node, and the service information in node. Ap-
plication domain obtains node information from the
global manager which updates the node information in
application domain by calling the update service of ap-
plication domain to modify the node information in the
application domain manager. Application domain man-
ages nodes information, as shown in Figure 8.
The application domain manager can delete its nodes,
and when it delete a node, the information of this node
will be deleted from applicatio n domain database, At the
same time, the synchronous update service of global
manager is called to send update request to global man-
ager in order to ensure the consensus of node data infor-
mation at both ends. Figure 9 shows the process of ap-
plication domain to delete node.
4.3. Application Domain Life-cycle Management
Service
The application domain life-cycle management functions
provide functions needed by the implementation of ap-
plication domain, such as create, suspend and log off
application domain.
Figure 8. Application domain manages nodes informa- tion
Figure 9. Application domain deletes node
The initialization functions of the application domain
are used to initialize the required information when ap-
plication domain is created. It mainly includes the crea-
tion of data table of application domain, getting node
information and user information from global manager.
After an application domain is created, it needs to
temporarily close the service on account of management
demand. You can use the hibernation function, through
the wake-up function to restart service.
It is required to log off service to release resources
which the application domain owned when an applica-
tion domain is removed or exceed the valid time, includ-
ing removing all the information in data table of the ap-
plication domain and stop application domain function .
4.4. Application Domain Spatial Function Service
The application domain spatial functions inquiry and
determine the request information which is sent to the
portal client. Get the node information which meets the
requirements through querying the node information in
database. And then sends the request to corresponding
node for the actual function operation. When the node
processing completed, the results will be returned to the
application domain, and application domain analyses and
integrates all the results. Finally returns to the portal-side
to display(see Figure 10).
The application domain spatial map display function
needs to calculate the scope of the map corresponded to
user role in application domain firstly, that is, the scope
the user can see according to corresponding permission;
then the application domain will send request to nodes
which can change the map to ask for a map of the desig-
nated area. After each node processing is completed, the
picture will send to the application domain manager by
binary stream, and the application domain manager over-
lay all of the pictures. Finally, the results will be returned
to the portal-side to call.
The application domain spatial query function is to
query a scope option through dragging a box and after
selecting a certain map scope firstly; the coordinates of
the scope are sent to the a application domain manager

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Figure 10. Application domain spatial analysis service
Figure 11. The management interface for application domain administrator
where the query scope will be parsed and judged in ord er
to determine which nodes need to send request; after the
request distributed is completed, the queries will be sent
to the corresponding node; then the node processes the
request and returns the results to application domain
which will integrate the results of all nodes and return it
to portal to display.
The application domain spatial overlay analysis func-
tion needs to select the overlay layer required to overlay
analysis firstly; then sends the request to the application
domain manager which will sent request to correspond-
ing node according to the location of layer node; the
node processes the request and returns results to applica-
tion domain; the application domain manager then re-
turns the results to portal to display.
The application domain spatial buffer analysis func-
tion needs to select the layer required to be analyzed.
You should set the layer to be edited firstly, and then
select the region of buffer analysis, and send a request to
the application domain manag er. The applicatio n domain
manager will parse and process the request in order to
get the nodes to meet the requirement. Then send the
buffer analysis request to nodes. Each node processes the
request will send the ultimately results to the application
domain manager which integrates the results and returns
the results to portal to display.
5. The experiment
In our lab, we deployed eight machines to form a distrib-
uted computing environment.
It establishes a small application domain formed with
four nodes in the spatial information grid support plat

Z. XIE ET AL.
39
Figure 12. map query interface of application domain
form system--MapGIS Grid. Each node is installed on
distributed query vector analysis software, and database
is installed on the application do main manager. We carry
out spatial query test for the distributed system, and get
accurate and fast query results. This is the login interface
for application domain administrator in figure 11. And
figure 12 is query and test result figure of the ap plication
domain.
6. Conclusion
This article is supported by the National High Technol-
ogy Research and Development Program (863 program)
major project “Grid GIS software and its major applica-
tion” and the project of the Special Fund for Basic Scien-
tific Research of Central Colleges, China University of
Geosciences (Wuhan).
In order to effectively manage and expediently use
these large distributed data in the grid environment, we
proposed a complete application domain building pro-
gram based on the grid resource system management of
multi-global managers. The integration of the applica-
tion domain builds the three-tier management system. It
makes the system nodes and global manager to play
their respective advantages: the node has the greatest
competence and higher self-governing, the application
domain realizes the function classification and quick
operation, and the global manager achieves integration
and sharing of resources. The application domain man-
ager shares part task of the global manager, the applica-
tion domain realizes fast and easy call the distributed
business, and distributed processing capabilities of
GridGIS is enhanced.
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