19 June 2001

MIGRATION OF AN OBJECT-ORIENTED MAPPING DATABASE
TO THE WORLD WIDE WEB

M. Cobb
University of Southern Mississippi
Hattiesburg, MS 39406-5106
H. Foley III    R. Wilson    K. Shaw
Naval Research Laboratory
Stennis Space Center, MS 39529

The project was undertaken by the Naval Research Laboratory's (NRL) Mapping, Charting and Geodesy Branch to enhance the ability of Department of Defense (DoD) modeling and simulation users to disseminate digital mapping data/model information in an efficient manner. This project was based on an object-oriented framework developed for the National Imagery and Mapping Agency's (NIMA) Vector Product Format (VPF) digital mapping data. To achieve two goals of the project, cross-platform data dissemination and end-user access from computers of "average" resources, we decided to migrate to a distributed client-server architecture based on the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) and the World Wide Web. In this paper we present our implementation of the first phase of this migration, which allows modeling and simulation users, as well as the overall digital mapping community, to access the object-oriented mapping data in a Smalltalk application/database using a Web browser with a Java applet.

Sponsored by the Defense Modeling and Simulation Office (DMSO) and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency s Terrain Modeling Program Office.

Published in the IEEE Software in May/June 1998.
Naval Research Laboratory Contribution Number NRL/JA/7441 97-0013.
Journal Article