#geo4web testbed

Modern ways of spatial data publication

Developer’s Perspective

September 2016, Rob Knapen

Meet Bob, the Web Developer

What are Personas

Personas are functional characters created to represent different user types

● A design technique (Alan Cooper, 1983)

● Also helpful for designing software

● User-centered design

● Developer Experience as well

Synthesized from data collected from interviews, captured in a 1-2 page realistic description of behavior patterns, goals, skills, attitudes, the environment, etc.

Our Personas and their Tale

Victor: End-user (for cultural heritage data)

Bob: Web Developer

The tale:

● Estate building plans in Victor’s unique area

● Difficult to look at e.g. “bestemmingsplannen” from the municipality

● Bob wants to help his buddy Victor

A World of Difference

Spatial Pragmatic

Supply and Demand of Geo data on the Web

Pragmatic – for the common developer

● Ad-Hoc and W3C standards (HTTP, HTML, REST, JSON)

-------------------------[DIVIDE]-----------------------------

Semantic – for the Linked Data professionals

● W3C standards (HTTP, RDF, SPARQL)

Spatial – for GIS Professionals

● OGC and W3C standards (HTTP, W*S, GML)

#geo4web testbed – available data

Spatial: PDOK Experiences

Where is the developer documentation?

What are these W*S?

What is a ‘functioneelgebied_vlak_label’?

How to use PDOK Kaart in Leaflet?

● Github to the rescue!

Pragmatic: Triply Experiences

Developer focussed documentation

URL’s + (Geo)JSON

Cleaned up data

Sample source code for Leaflet

(All at early stage though)

#geo4web Lessons Learned

#geo4web Lessons Learned – 1 / 4

Everyone in a platform or community has their own needs and capacities

For Bob:

● Webpage with developer targeted information

● Help with solving customer’s problems

● Quickly, time is money

● Or loose them to Google Maps

● Open data, or service with free tier

#geo4web Lessons Learned – 2 / 4

Make search engines feel comfortable to discover you

For Bob:

● Won’t find it unless it is on the Web

● Must be indexed, and have metadata

● In familiar terminology

Semantic Web technology is not yet low entry level!

#geo4web Lessons Learned – 3 / 4

Deal with the unknown set of developers and devices

For Bob:

● Data in direct usable format (GeoJSON)

● Paging, Linked Data Fragments

Can still be further improved

● E.g. only return requested properties

#geo4web Lessons Learned – 4 / 4

Don’t copy data, use proxy

For Bob:

● Proxy should be performant

● Proxy should be memory efficient

● Proxy adds Point of Failure

● Proxy should be in sync with data service

Closing Thoughts

Developer Experience:

● Keep things pragmatic

● Lower the entry level, targeted webpages

● Note: There are all kinds of developers

Use personas:

● User-centered design

● For testing and evaluating products

● For presenting and pitching

Thanks to:

• You!

• Geonovum

• Triply

• PDOK

• Dutch Government

Contact:

rob.knapen@wur.nl

https://github.com/geo4web-testbed