Glossary and Acronyms
The following is a glossary of terms and acronyms that are frequently used in iShare and/or Astun materials.
Term | Context(s) | Explanation |
|---|---|---|
| ADS | Web Services | Astun Data Services is a service which provides a range of geographic data as web services for consumption as Base mapping within web mapping and desktop GIS applications. |
| ADFS | iShare GIS / Cloud | Active Directory Federation Services is a Single Sign-On (SSO) solution created by Microsoft. As a component of Windows Server operating systems, it provides users with authenticated access to applications that are not capable of using Integrated Windows Authentication (IWA) through Active Directory (AD). ADFS is used at Astun to provide iShare in the Cloud customers single sign authentication integrated with the customer corporate Activce Directory. |
| Astun | General | Anagram of the surname of Mike Saunt. The name of the company and group of people who are passionate about geo, open and excellent customer service. |
| AWS | Web Services | Amazon Web Services is a cloud computing environment provided by Amazon. Astun use AWS for all cloud hosting such as iShare in the Cloud and Astun Data Services. |
| Basemap | iShare GIS, iShare Maps | A Basemap is the main underlying mapping such as OS MasterMap, Aerial Photography etc. |
| CSW | Data | Catalogue Service for the Web. This is a web service like WFS or WMS but for accessing Metadata rather than Spatial data. |
| Data Share | Data Storage | Data Share is the iShare data harvesting engine providing live and scheduled access to a multitude of data sources including spatial data warehouses, standard databases, standard geo file formats, spreadsheets and RSS Feeds. |
| Datasource | Data Storage | A Datasource is a name given to the connection set up to a database from a server. The name is commonly used when creating a query to the database. |
| DSN | Data Connection | A Data Source Name is the name that applications use to request a connection to an ODBC Data Source. In other words, it is a symbolic name that represents the ODBC connection. It stores the connection details like database name, directory, database driver, UserID, password, etc. when making a connection to the ODBC. |
| FeatureServer | Open Source Tools | FeatureServer is an implementation of a RESTful Geographic Feature Service. Using standard HTTP methods, you can fetch a representation of a feature or a collection of features, add new data to the service, or delete data from the service. Is it s used by iShare GIS to enable Feature Editing. |
| Filter | iShare GIS | Applying a Filter to a Layer allows you to select to display only a sub-set of the data. |
| Gazetteer | Data | A Gazetteer contains a list of names of places (addresses), usually with some extra information. In iShare these are used for Location Lookups. |
| GEMINI | Standards | UK GEMINI (GEo-spatial Metadata INteroperability InItiative) is a specification for a set of metadata elements for describing geospatial data resources. |
| GeoServer | Open Source Tools | GeoServer is a OGC compliant implementation of a number of open standards such as Web Feature Service (WFS) and Web Map Service (WMS). |
| GeoNetwork | Open Source Tools | GeoNetwork is a catalog application to manage spatially referenced resources. It provides powerful metadata editing and search functions as well as an interactive web map viewer. It is currently used in numerous Spatial Data Infrastructure initiatives across the world. |
| Geospatial | Data | Geospatial means relating to or denoting data that is associated with a particular location. |
| Instance | iShare GIS | An Instance is a Virtual Server in AWS (Amazon Web Services) in the Cloud. |
| INSPIRE | Standards | INSPIRE is an EU directive requiring the publication of geospatial information related to the environment. |
| iShare | Astun Products | iShare is Astun's web GIS platform. It consists of a number of different modules, such as iShare GIS, iShare Maps, iShare Studio, Logger, My Alerts, Publisher and Spatial Data Warehouse. |
| iShare in the Cloud | Astun Products | iShare in the Cloud is a managed service provided by Astun whereby iShare is hosted and maintained in the AWS Cloud as an alternative delivery model to on-premise deployment. |
| iShare GIS | Astun Products | iShare GIS is an intranet GIS platform that offers much of the desktop functionality that most GIS users require, enabling migration from a desktop to the browser solution for the majority of an organisation’s users, including data editors. |
| iShare Maps | Astun Products | iShare Maps is a public facing internet application which includes a map portal, a property or area centric report page, embeddable maps for use within web pages and location based searches generating textual lists and find my nearest results. |
| iShare Spotlight | Astun Products | iShare Spotlight is an application that allows a GIS user to configure an interactive map, with layers of your GIS data and publish it in an iFrame embedded in your website or webform. |
| Job | iShare Studio | A Workflow Job is a collection of Tasks that are required to create / update information in the Data Share database which may then be used within iShare or Embedded maps etc. |
| Lambda | Cloud | AWS Lambda lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers. You pay only for the compute time you consume - there is no charge when your code is not running. iShare GIS V5.8 makes use of this. |
| Lite Map | iShare Maps | A Lite Map is an interactive map that can be embedded in any web page. It also allows for the display of a Feature List or to include points from a GeoRSS feed. |
| Logger | Astun Products | Logger is an iShare module that enables citizens to locate on a map and report broken street lamps, abandoned cars, fly tipping, graffiti etc. and insert these reports into a CRM or other workflow. |
| MapProxy | Open Source Tools | MapProxy is an open source proxy for geospatial data. It caches, accelerates and transforms data from existing map services and serves any desktop or web GIS client. |
| MapServer | Open Source Tools | MapServer is an Open Source platform for publishing spatial data and interactive mapping applications to the web. |
| Map Source | iShare GIS | A Map Source describes a map that can be retrieved from a remote map server. |
| Metadata | Data | Metadata means "data about data" and is defined as the data providing information about one or more aspects of that data. It is used to summarise basic information about your data which can make searching and working with specific data easier. |
| My House | iShare Maps | My House is part of iShare Maps and provides information related to the entered address and its surrounding area enhanced with a small embedded map. |
| My Maps | iShare Maps | My Maps is part of iShare Maps and provides the user with fast, ‘slippy maps’ centred on the selected property within a bold, fresh and intuitive interface. |
| My Nearest | iShare Maps | My Nearest is part of iShare Maps and provides information related to services, events or entities near to the entered address location further enhanced by a small embedded map. |
| My Alerts | iShare Maps | My Alerts is part of iShare Maps and enables a member of the public to sign up to a Local Authority alert service that automatically sends an email when any council related service event happens within a predefined distance from their house. |
| ODBC | Data Connection | Open DataBase Connectivity is a standard Application Programming Interface (API) for accessing DataBase Management Systems (DBMS). |
| OmniSearch | iShare GIS | This is the |
| OpenLayers | Open Source Tools | OpenLayers is an open source JavaScript library for displaying map data in web browsers as slippy maps. It provides an API for building rich web-based geographic applications such as iShare. |
| OGC | Standards | The Open Geospatial Consortium is an international not for profit organisation committed to making quality open standards for the global geospatial community. |
| OGC Layer | Data | OGC Layers are layers which are built on OGC Standards including WMS & WFS. |
| OSGeo | Open Source | The Open Source Geospatial Foundation is a non-profit non-governmental organisation whose mission is to support and promote the collaborative development of open geospatial technologies and data. |
| OWS | Web Services | An all encompassing reference to various OGC web services including (but not limited to) WMS, WFS, WMTS etc. |
| PostGIS | Open Source Tools | PostGIS is an extension to PostgreSQL that provides spatial objects for the PostgreSQL database, allowing storage and query of information about location and mapping. |
| PostgreSQL | Open Source Tools | PostgreSQL is a general purpose and object-relational database management system, the most advanced open source database system. |
| Profile | iShare GIS | A Profile is basically a Map Source which contains a specific set of maps. You could create different Profiles for particular groups of users. You can also limit access to a Profile (or Map Source) by applying Roles. Once you have applied a Role to a Map Source then, only users who are a member of that role will be able to see that Map Source |
| PSMA | General Industry | The Public Sector Mapping Agreement (PSMA) is a collective agreement between Ordnance Survey and the government. Its licence lets public sector organisations in England and Wales access and share OS digital mapping. |
| Publisher | Astun Products | Publisher is an iShare module that enables a Council to publish any of its back office data via its website. |
| Python | Programming | Python is an interpreted high-level programming language for general-purpose programming. |
| QGIS | Open Source Tools | QGIS is a free and open-source cross-platform desktop geographic information system application that supports viewing, editing, and analysis of geospatial data. |
| Roles | iShare GIS | In order to ensure that only the correct people can view information via a MapSource, iShare has the concept of Roles. Roles are configured through Studio and assigned to MapSources as required. Only those users that are members of one or more of the roles in a MapSource will be permitted to query the data using that MapSource. |
| Schema | Database | A database schema is a way to logically group objects such as tables, views, stored procedures etc. |
| SLD | Styling | A Style Layer Descriptor addresses the need for users and software to be able to control the visual portrayal of the geospatial data. The ability to define styling rules requires a styling language that the client and server can both understand. |
| Snapshot | Cloud | A snapshot is a copy of the virtual machine's (VM) disk file at a given point in time. Snapshots provide a change log for the virtual disk and are used to restore a VM to a particular point in time. This is most useful when you want to preserve the state of the virtual machine so you can return to the same state repeatedly. |
| Studio | Astun Products | Studio is the Administration console for iShare. |
| Studio ETL | Astun Products | Studio ETL is a slimmed-down version of iShare Studio with just the Data Share and Workflow modules, primarily intended to sit on the Internal Server, to Extract, Transform & Load (ETL) data to and from the iShare Cloud. |
| SDW | Data Storage | Spatial Data Warehouse is an iShare module developed on PostGIS that enables the sharing of spatial data at multiple levels across an enterprise and beyond. |
| Solo Map | iShare Maps | A Solo Map is a map that can be embedded within any web page. Whilst similar to a Lite Map, it also has the ability to display various panels for functions such as Find Address, Find Nearest etc. |
| Tilecache | Data | Tile caching is a very effective way to make your map and image services run faster. When you create a tilecache, the server draws the entire map at several different scales and stores copies of the map images. The server can then distribute these images whenever someone asks for a map. It's much quicker for the server to return a cached image than to draw the map each time someone requests it. |
| VPC | Cloud | The Amazon Virtual Private Cloud is a logically isolated section of the AWS Cloud where you can launch AWS resources in a virtual network that you define. iShare in the Cloud customers are all provisioned with a virtual private cloud specific to them rather than sharing resources with other Astun customers. |
| VPN | Cloud | The Virtual Private Network is a hardware-based connection between your Amazon VPC and your local network. |
| Workflow | iShare Studio | A workflow is a sequence of operations. In the case of iShare workflows consist of Jobs, which are a collection of Tasks, that may be scheduled to run automatically or on an ad-hoc basis to provide data to iShare. These are configured in the Workflow Manager in iShare Studio. |
| Workspace | iShare GIS & iShare Maps | Using Workspaces is a way of serving information to two or more separate iShare sites using a single centralised iShare installation. Workspaces would also be used if you wish to have a separate site for different Languages e.g. English and Welsh. |
| WFS | Web Services / Standards | A Web Feature Service is a standard created by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) for creating, modifying and exchanging vector format geographic information on the Internet using HTTP. A WFS encodes and transfers information in Geography Markup Language (GML), a subset of XML. |
| WMS | Web Services / Standards | A Web Map Service is a standard created by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) for transforming your data into a map (image). |
| WMTS | Web Services / Standards | A Web Map Tile Service is a standard protocol for serving pre-rendered or run-time computed georeferenced map tiles over the Internet. The specification was developed and first published by the Open Geospatial Consortium in 2010. |
| WPS | Web Services / Standards | Web Processing Service is a standard created by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) which provides rules for standardising how inputs and outputs (requests and responses) for invoking geospatial processing services, such as polygon overlay, as a web service. The WPS standard defines how a client can request the execution of a process, and how the output from the process is handled. |
