WebGIS application with OpenLayers 2 - Part 3: Data management

In the last part of the series, we will cover data management in OpenLayers 2. It is a quite difficult part, as browsers mostly don't have native support for relational databases. The only exceptions are browsers powered by WebKit. This way, we have to make sure manually, that our data is stored in a consistent way. ASCII geodata formats, which are mainly used in web mapping environments don't support databases. We can store different attributes for every geometry in a layer/dataset. This doesn't seem to be an issue on the first glance, as web mapping libraries can handle object-oriented databases very well. However, if you declare attributes arbitrary, in an inconsistent way, you will have a hard time when you try to process it with a RDBMS. As the server side processing GIS softwares (e.g. QGIS, GRASS, PostGIS) will put these datasets into a relational database, it might be a wise consideration to handle features like they were in a relational table on the frontend.

WebGIS application with OpenLayers 2 - Part 2: Map controls

So far we have created the basic container for a web mapping application GUI. The key aspect in a good application is user experience. This mostly depends on how easily a user can utilize the application, and how smoothly can accomplish a workflow. For a decent user experience, one should think as a user when designing the appearance and mechanics of the application. To make things go right in a WebGIS application powered by OpenLayers 2, the library offers a wide variety of controls. As developers, the responsibility is on us, if we get the most out of it, or not. This is the part where OpenLayers 2 shows its advantages even against its successor. The following post will demonstrate how we can extend our application with minimal programming, and mostly controls offered by OpenLayers 2.