o Screenshots or diagram of prototype:

o Description of Prototype: SPACER software enables GPS-supported mobile phones, running Google’s Android platform, to query metadata repositories supporting the catalogue service standard of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC).

o End User of Prototype: students and researchers in any discipline that requires fieldwork e.g geology, geophysics, archaeology and geomatics.

o Link to working prototype: click here

o Link to end user documentation: click here

o Link to code repository or API: click here

o Link to technical documentation: click here

o Date prototype was launched: Tuesday 8th December 2009

o Project Team Names, Emails and Organisations:

 Project Manager: Mike Jackson, mike.jackson@nottingham.ac.uk, Centre for Geospatial Science – University of Nottingham

 Software Engineer: Gobe Hobona, Gobe.Hobona@nottingham.ac.uk, Centre for Geospatial Science – University of Nottingham

 Stakeholder Representative(BGS): Colm Jordan, cjj@bgs.ac.uk, British Geological Survey

 Stakeholder Representative(Edina): Ben Butchart, b.butchart@ed.ac.uk, Edina – University of Edinburgh

o Project Website: click here

o PIMS entry: click here

o Table of Content for Project Posts:
 Introducing SPACER
 Day-to-Day work
 Small Wins & Fails
 Project SWOTing
 User Participation-Use Case
 User Participation-User and Functional Requirements
 Day-to-Day work 2
 Small Wins and Fails 2
 Prototype Status Video
 Ranking Results
 LBS2009 Showcase
 MapView on the move
 Source Code released
 SPACER at Londroid Android meeting
 SPACER goes into testing
 Technical Standards
 Value Add
 User Testing

SPACER is using the Catalogue Service for the Web(CSW) standard of the Open Geospatial Consortium(OGC). The standard allows a client to send requests to a metadata registry in either Key-Value-Pairs(through HTTP GET) or XML(through HTTP POST). The response is in XML. This approach appears to give SPACER performance of 10 seconds to request, process and present search results on an Android emulator. On the HTC Hero the response time is about 5-7 seconds depending on the status of the network. On a desktop search engine, this performance would be unacceptable. However, in a location based application where the datasets have spatial footprints several meters wide, search results are not likely to change during that 7 seconds (unless if the user is sprinting across a field). Therefore, we consider this performance to be acceptable.

Of course an option is to use REST, by creating a REST-to-CSW mediator.

A position statement of the OGC on REST is available at the following URL:

http://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=32222

Another option is for the OGC to create a CSW profile for mobile applications by creating a subset of the FGDC metadata standard. For the same number of elements, FGDC metadata has fewer characters than ISO19115/19139. This is because the latter has several nested XML elements.

Programming Languages

We use Eclipse and its Android plug-in so we develop in Java. Sometimes it is disappointing to find that a useful standard Java class has been removed in Android’s Java version. However, so far the Android blogs and forums have pointed to useful alternatives.

Surprisingly, the HTC Hero is faster than the Android Emulator we used in laboratory tests!