The Carbon Project

CarbonCloud Sync Technology Overview

CarbonCloud Sync is a Cloud or Web-hosted service that allows synchronization of geospatial content across a federated deployment of services. The system can use any existing deployment of Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Feature Services with transactional capabilities (WFS-T).

The CarbonCloud Sync system is vendor neutral and bridges services from ESRI, Intergraph, ERDAS, CubeWerx, GeoServer and others; providing true geospatial interoperability to any organization or community. CarbonCloud Sync includes advanced Gaia Extenders to support feature editing and synchronization, as well as a service-driven automated process that keeps registered WFS-T up to date with changes and updates.

The CarbonCloud Sync system supports three types of end-users: Publishers, Reviewers, and Followers:

• Publisher - The Publisher is in charge of making changes to content. This person or system generates feature changes, using a mobile or desktop application, and submits them for review or immediate dissemination (depending on the system configuration). The changes include adding, deleting, or updating features. The changes are then submitted to the CarbonCloud Sync service. When a change is accepted or rejected the Publisher is notified via a Resolution GeoRSS feed. In case of a rejection the Publisher can correct and adjust according to the Reviewer comments. A Gaia CarbonCloud Sync Extender enhances the Gaia WFS-T Extender with the appropriate functionality thus streamlining the publishing process and making full use of Gaia's powerful editing and transaction tools.
• Reviewer - The Reviewer is a person or system that has the authority to approve changes submitted by Publishers. The Reviewer is subscribed to a Change GeoRSS feed from the CarbonCloud Sync service. This feed allows the Reviewer to monitor only changes of interest (specific server, specific layers, region etc.). When the Reviewer receives a change, he can then use the Gaia CarbonCloud Sync Extender to review the change and declare it as either 'accepted' or 'rejected'. The CarbonCloud Sync service will automatically disseminate accepted changes to any registered Web Feature Services via standard WFS-T transactions.
• Follower - A Follower can use standard RSS reader to get updates on any desktop or mobile device. When changes to a server are accepted the CarbonCloud Sync service announces them to the appropriate Followers via the customizable (through a RESTful API) Replication GeoRSS feed. A Follower subscribed to these event notifications will receive the appropriate updates in the form of RSS or GeoRSS entries.