ABSTRACT
At the same time, geographic information requirements are being laid against end-user and public access applications outside the scope of classical GIS, such as architectural and engineering data in three dimensions. For this reason there is pressure to move geographic information into a service model with simple accesses to allow non-GIS application developers to integrate external geographic functionality into their applications without delving into the sea of geographic complexity. Although useful in many applications, this external service approach is limited and does not provide a good mechanism to integrate the diverse types of spatial data being used. Nongeographic applications with heavy spatial components, like engineering, need a deeper level of integration points into geographic space. Both deep technical and lighter public use are leading geographic information to a universality of use that will ultimately tend toward complete ubiquity, where spatial data will be on a par with textual and numeric data as the backbone of any technical endeavor. To be successful, an SII (spatial information infrastructure) must provide for both types of integration. But the paradoxical requirements for “ease of use,” “public access” and “deep integration” are beyond the classical GIS approaches.
