Developing GIS Applications with Objects: A Design Patterns Approach

In this paper we present an object-oriented approach for designing GIS applications; it combines well known software engineering practices with the use of design patterns as a conceptual tool to cope with recurrent problems appearing in the GIS domain. Our approach allows the designer to decouple the conceptual definition of application objects from their spatial representation. In this way, GIS applications can evolve smoothly, because maintenance is achieved by focusing on different concerns at different times. We show that our approach is also useful to support spatial features in conventional applications built with object-oriented technology. The structure of this paper is as follows: We first introduce design patterns, an efficient strategy to record design experience; then we discuss the most common design problems a developer of GIS applications must face. The core of our method is then presented by explaining how the use of decorators helps in extending objects to incorporate spatial attributes and behavior. Next, we analyze some recurrent design problems in the GIS domain and present some new patterns addressing those problems. Some further work is finally discussed.