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Why a CubeWerx Solution?
There are three major reasons why a CubeWerx solution should be considered as the preferred software platform provider by your organization:
CubeWerx is a world leader in the development and commercialization of interoperable technologies for the storage, management and distribution of geospatial data on the Internet. Since joining OGC in 1999, CubeWerx has demonstrated an unwavering commitment towards the development of Open Web Services (OWS) specifications to free up the exchange of geospatial information on the Internet. CubeWerx has taken on the editorship of several key OGC specifications: the Web Feature Server, the Style Layer Descriptor, the Filter Specifications and others currently in development. In 2003, three directors from CubeWerx received OGC’s Kenneth Gardels award for their dedication, commitment and respect for the OGC process and members in advancing OpenGIS specifications.
Because of this direct involvement in the design, specification and implementation of OGC standards, CubeWerx have been able to bring products to market earlier than other companies with far greater R&D resources and market presence. Our CubeSERV Web Map Server was one of the very first products to come to market based on the OGC approved specification. In addition, CubeWerx was the first (possibly only) vendor to implement a WMS cascading model that fully exploits the OGC concept of chaining services. Being engaged in OGC test beds and pilots means that we can not only help define the specifications but can also build prototype solutions in the process that can be rapidly developed into products. CubeWerx expects that its involvement in the on-going Distributed Access Control System specification will mean that its upcoming DACS-in-a-Box product will once again be a first for the industry. Consequently, CubeWerx has become recognized leaders in building and marketing products to OGC specifications.
CubeWerx has also been in the right place at the right time anticipating which way any given standard will evolve. Point in case is the OGC Catalog 1.0 standard where many product vendors blindly adopted this standard and built solutions based on it. CubeWerx was acutely aware that this standard was only an interim standard as it was simply inappropriate for a geospatial data infrastructure environment. Currently the Z39.50 protocol supported in OGC Catalog 1.0 is not a web protocol and non transactional; this protocol binding is more suited to a static library application with limited capability for web services. Organizations that have implemented catalog services under this standard had to build proprietary interfaces for managing meta-data in the repository thus locking them in to vendor specific solutions. In fact the OGC Catalog 1.0 standard does not support the concept of a registry to be used for discovering catalog information. Consequently, CubeWerx was not prepared to take its customers down a ‘blind alley’ preferring to hold off until the new OGC Catalog 2.0 standard became clear.
CubeWerx Web Registry Service, as a result of its direct involvement in the development of the OGC specification (OCG Catalog 2.0 specification which is under review) is defined well enough to plan the development of its first version of the registry product. This product will be delivered during the first quarter of 2004 and we expect that it will be one of the very few SCOTS products that will conform to the evolving OGC Catalog standard.
In summary, CubeWerx’ is simply plugged in to OGC and coupled with its highly skilled professional team and responsible attitude towards product development means that CubeWerx SCOTS products are not only going to come to market sooner but are more likely to be more future proof yielding considerable benefits to its customers. In a
Quick-Take review article published in August 2000 Fredrick Limp, director of the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies, presented CubeWerx as in innovative organization with a strong vision. This is still the case today.
SCOTS Product Approach
By adopting a nimble, no nonsense approach to product planning, CubeWerx customers have benefited by the release of high quality out-of-the-box products that are designed and built around the latest OGC adopted standards. Software products built this way are typically categorized to as “Standards-based Commercial Off The Shelf” (SCOTS) products. Many software companies are also jumping on this band-wagon and claiming that their products are also SCOTS.
The criteria for a product to be classified as a true SCOTS products are as follows:
- Standards-based. This means that the vendor has used an adopted standard (e.g. OGC approved standard or OWS standards) version and supported all the features of that standard and can be officially certified as supporting that version of the standard.
- Commercial Off The Shelf. This means that the software product can be purchased by an end user and with the installation documentation and/or training can be installed by the end user on the target platform. This product is either supported under an ongoing maintenance & support contract or it represents a functional ‘snapshot’ in time and any upgrades to it will be purchased as an upgrade service as needed. Either way the upgrade to the new version should not be too problematic in that applications should not need to be re-engineered to support the new upgraded version.
This implies that as and when the standard changes the product needs to be kept up to date or it will not be supported at the newer versions of the standard; and any discontinued features should be supported over time so that applications that use these features do not cease to work after a product upgrade.
CubeWerx products are marketed and sold as truly packaged products just as expected from any GIS or RDBMS product. CubeWerx products come with marketing material, training, documentation manuals, packaging, maintenance, support and licensing. This is quite different from open source products which are typically (with very few exceptions) developed by many different people, are unsupported, lightly (if at all) documented and are taken on an ‘as is’ basis. Solutions based on these components are typically unique in that they are heavily augmented with bespoke integration software to satisfy user requirements which requires more consulting services or internal resources to support.
CubeWerx takes care to make all its products backwards compatible with previous versions of the standards. For example, their CubeSERV WMS product supports all known adopted OGC WMS versions 1.0.0, 1.1.0 and 1.1.1 and 1.2 (to be adopted by OGC within the next 3 months). CubeWerx’ closeness with OGC has allowed us to help design and test OGC specification compliance tests scripts as well. This ensures that customers can take advantage of new features whilst existing applications continue to operate. Whilst many COTS products (i.e. GIS vendors) may support one version they may not necessarily adopt the OGC modifications/upgrades as regularly as CubeWerx has done; and open source based solutions typically require extensive consulting or internal resources to implement any new standard.
CubeWerx intelligent mix of selective standard adoption and a professional product development approach and support of its products is, in our judgement, the best mix and ensures that its customers are getting the full benefits of a true SCOTS solution. This in turn will protect your investment as the OGC standards continue to evolve.
Product Performance
In order to support your most demanding geospatial information infrastructure requirements for web mapping and geodata access CubeWerx has been optimizing its products to leverage current entry level hardware platforms. In addition CubeWerx support for extremely large volume of geodata (vector and imagery) was also identified as a major strength for CubeWerx products by Fredrick Limp in his GEOWorld article in August 2000. Consequently, we feel that a solution based on a software platform that has been proven to easily scale to accommodate these conditions should be of interest to your organization.
CubeWerx provides a Spatial Data Warehouse product (CubeSTOR) that supports several architectural features that enable it to scale far better than other standard GIS warehouse solutions. This has been demonstrated at several of CubeWerx’ customer sites. Therefore, this proven CubeSTOR Spatial Warehouse product may be the way to scale your solution for better handling unpredictable usage growth.
In addition, during the last two years CubeWerx in partnership with other organizations have invested and contributed to providing solutions directed at resolving the implementation of a “Common Security Framework” over the web. Offering solutions to resolve this infrastructure challenge implies deploying mechanisms for identity/ authentication, access control including managing roles of participants in such a way that each jurisdiction maintains complete autonomy of its web-enabled data resources. For a larger number of security proponents, a common security framework is an important element of any internal or public Spatial Data Infrastructure solution. Building on the Canadian government effort with the development of a Distributed Access Control System (DACS) prototype including efforts from OGC and W3C activities in this area, CubeWerx is developing an innovative “Identity Management” product. CubeWerx expects that this product will be available in Q3 of 2004.
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