Behind the Scenes

WiscLinc was designed and created by the student production staff of the SCO. The original site design was envisioned by Ben Sheesley in the summer of 2004. Since then, the site has gone through a number of changes, but still contains the basic elements of Sheesley's design.

Our FindGeodata catalog and WiscMap applications were designed and programmed by a team of students let by Matt Bloch. FindGeodata was designed to offer more interactivity than conventional online data clearinghouses. Its features include smart placename searching, sorting of results according to several criteria, a built-in metadata viewer, and close integration with our WiscMap application. FindGeodata consists of a web interface created using Javascript, CSS and XSLT, a MySQL database, and a set of programs for updating the catalog and responding to web queries that were written in PHP.

Interactivity was also the guiding principle behind our WiscMap design. Conventional web maps can be cumbersome to use, because a new map image must be generated every time a user pans the map or changes the map layers that are being displayed. In order to support continuous panning and real-time layer management, we designed a system for caching and reusing map images. The first time a set of map tiles are requested at a particular scale and extent, they are generated on-the-fly by MapServer. The tiles are then stored for later use, so subsequent requests are handled almost instantaneously. WiscMap incorporates other design features to improve interactivity, including on-the-fly layer handling, a drag-box zooming tool and navigation history.

The following software and hardware are used in the function and design of this site.

• Apache computing and storage products (www.apache.com)
• PHP scripting language (www.php.net)
• MySQL open source database (www.mysql.com)
• Mapserver open source development environment for building spatially enabled internet applications (mapserver.gis.umn.edu)