Glossary

coordinate system

A way for decription of point location relative to selected axes.

data

Information represented in a way it can be processed with automatic tools with possible participation of an operator. [GOST 15971-90, article 1]

ESRI Shape
Shapefile

Popular format for geodata files. Is developed and supported by Esri company for interoperability between products of Esri and other software.

geodata
geospatial data
spatial data

Data aboult spatial features and sets of features.

geographical feature
spatial feature
geofeature

Digital model for material or abstract feature of real or virtual world with assigned identifier, coordinates and attributes.

geographical information system

Information system that operates with geographical data (geodata). [GOST R 52438-2005 “Geographical information systems. Terms and definitions”]

GeoJSON

Open standard for representation of simple geographical features with their non-spatial attributes using a JavaScript Object notation.

GeoTIFF

Open geodata format for raster data representation in a TIFF format with matadata about georeferencing. Uses TIFF 6.0 specification, and adds some types of geotags that defines a type of cartographic projection, geographical coordinate system, geoid, datum and all other information required for precise spatial orientation of satellite image.

GLONASS
Global navigation satellite system

Soviet/Russian satellite navigation system initially developed for Ministry of defence of USSR. One of the two currently functioning systems for global satellite navigation (Chinese satellite navigation system BeiDou currently functions as regional).

GPS

Global positioning system

information support for geographic information system

A set of knowledge about information resources, information services, classificators, rules for digital description, data formats and documentation, that is presented to the user or a developer of geographical information system for it’s creation, maintenance and usage.

information system

1. System for storage, processing, search, distribution, transfer and representation of information. [GOST 7.0-99, arcticle 3.1.30] 2. A set of information contained in databases and tools and technologies for information processing . [Federal law “About information, information technnologies and information security” 27 July 2006 N 149-FL]

Mapnik

Open source map renderer. Written on C++ and Python. Uses a AGG library and has a function of smoothing of features with high acuracy. It can read from ESRI formats, PostGIS, TIFF, .osm files, and also supports for any GDAL or OGR formats.

MapServer

Server geographical information system with open source that is launched through CGI interface.

Open Source

Software with open source code. Source code of such software is available for view, study and update. This allows a user to participate in a process of development of open source software, to use a code for creation of new software and debugging — through borrowing of source code if that is allowed by license compatibility, or to study of used algorithms, data structures, technologies, methods and interfaces (as source code could essentially complete documentation or be a kind of documentation if there is no one).

PostGIS

Extension for relational DBMS PostgreSQL for storage of geodata in a database. PostGIS has a support for spatial indexes R-Tree/GiST and geodata processing functions.

QGIS

A user-friendly geographical information system with open source code, distributed under GNU General Public License. QGIS is a project of Open Source Geospatial Foundation. It works on Linux, Unix, Mac OSX, Windows and Android, supports for various vector, raster formats, databases and has a variety of functions.

TMS
Tile map service

OSGeo standard that describes an access to representation of geodata through the Internet/Intranet without an access to geodata itself.

WFS
Web Feature Service

A web service that represents data in a vector GML format. Client gets both attributes and geometry. Thare are standard extensions:

  • Transactional (WFS-T) - allows clients to send to WFS server new and updated data;

  • Gazetteer (WFS-G) - a draft of a standard that adds a search and a query of items by dictionary of geographical names. Initially developed by USGS;

  • Temporal - a draft of a standard that adds a temporal measurement;

  • Versioning (WFS-V, WFSV) - allows to work with different versions of data (particular development of GeoServer project, not standardized by OGC).

WMS
Web Map Service

A standard protocol for serving of georeferenced images through the Internet that are generated on server on a basis of data from a gis database. Standard was developed and initially published by international organization OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium ) in 1999.