“A geoportal is a gateway to Web-based geospatial resources, enabling users to discover, view and access geospatial information and services made available by their providing organizations. Likewise, data providers can use the geoportal to make their geospatial resources discoverable, viewable, and accessible to others.” (sourceforge)

Technological solution of any geoportal should utilize principles of service oriented architecture (SOA). Inner SOA infrastructure is divided into three logical layers:

Clients: entities that use services provided by producers, clients represent end-user environment

Producers: entities that provide specific services and functionality

SOA infrastructure: enables communication between clients and producers, it also manages rights and security and provides additional (supportive) services

Main components of a geoportal usually include:

Portal (organizes and interconnects individual applications)

Map client (provides for visualization of map data and accessing map services, it is interconnected to metadata client and other applications)

Metadata client (enables search, display and management of metadata)

Administrator tools (a set of applications for services management, administration of components operation, user rights management as well as monitoring and reporting processes)

Map server (a map server providing map services in compliance with OGC (WMS, WFS, WCS) and other (AGS REST) standards)

Metadata server (supporting requested meta data profile, is used by metadata client)

Application services (partial services of business logic used by E-shop, ETL services etc.)

Services registry (inner catalogue describing inner services, their monitoring and auditing)

GIS data (data stored in a database or files)

Metadata (metadata stored in a database or XML files)

E-shop (data issuance module) (a web application that allows end users of geoportal to purchase provided data/services and download these data/access services. It includes admin tools for preparation of data sets/services offer, licence terms definition and so on)

Enterprise Service Bus, user-rights management and security layer (ensures reliable, monitored and audited communication with services included in service layers as well as communication between individual services)

Modern geoportal should meet following requirements:

be client-oriented (personalization)

utilize internet rich applications (AJAX)

consist of gadgets (mini-applications and objects)

be built on web oriented architecture (SOA, REST)

be platform-independent

support mobile clients (iPad, iPhone, …)

Geoportal concepts

T-MAPY has developed two main concepts and solutions of geoportal design:

GEOportal:

This concept arises from standard GIS approach. Typical solution of GEOportal concept is a set of complex map applications providing access to various geographic information. Main application interface is a map window with specified tools.
Geoportal solution representing principle focused on GEO part is called Esri MAX – "EMAX". It utilizes standards and processes supported by Esri – namely standards used in ArcGIS Server solutions (REST API, Silverlight API, FLEX API, …).

geoPORTAL:

This concept employs new logic of modern web portals (e.g. iGoogle) where all functionality is divided into miniapplications (gadgets). Desired function is accessed by adding a gadget to the selected web page. The same principle is applied to map application – it is formed by a set of mini-applications that communicate via JavaScript events. Map window is no longer the centre of the portal, it poses as one of the gadgets..
OGC (INSPIRE) MAX – “OMAX” represents geoPORTAL principle solution. It fully respects OGC (WMS, WFS, WCS, CSW) as well as portal (portlets, WSRP, JSR 168). This geoportal utilizes Liferay or IBM WebSphere technology.